Twentieth Anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review - PJM No 4 (proceedings)

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEWPACIFIC JOURNALISM MONOGRAPHS NO. 4: 20 DECEMBER 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS AUT UNIVERSITY, 27-29 NOVEMBER 2014

POLITICAL JOURNALISM IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC

Pacific Media Centre, AUT University, Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand

www.pmc.aut.ac.nz | www.pjreview.info © Im

age

from

Jim

Mar

broo

k’s

docu

men

tary

Cap

Boc

age

PJR 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 1

Twentieth anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review:

Political journalism in the Asia Pacific

Pacific Journalism Monographs

No. 4 20 December 2014

Edited byDavid Robie

Pacific Media CentreAuckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand

2 PJR 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Pacific Journalism Monographs No. 4 20 December 2014 ISSN 2253-4113e-ISSN 2253-4121

National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Robie, David.Twentieth anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review/ David Robie.Pacific journalism monographs ; no. 4Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 978-0-473-31038-7Published by the Pacific Media Centre Twentieth anniversary of Pacific journalism review : Political journalism in the Asia-Pacific / David Robie (editor).(Pacific journalism monographs ; no. 4)ISBN 978-0-473-31038-7 (pbk.)—ISBN 978-0-473-31092-9 (PDF)1. Mass media—Moral and ethical aspects—Pacific area—Congresses. 2. Mass media—Political aspects—Pacific area—Congresses. 3. Mass media—Social aspects—Pacific area—Congresses. I. Robie, David. II. Pacific Media Centre. III. Series.070.40995—dc 23

This monograph is accompanied by a video at YouTube 2014: http://tinyurl.com/k3sfosg

Published by the Pacific Media Centre D-63 School of Communication Studies Auckland University of Technology Private Bag 92006 Auckland Aotearoa/New Zealand Website: www.pmc.aut.ac.nz Monograph layout: Del AbcedeSeries general editor: Professor David Robie, director, Pacific Media Centre © 2014 Pacific Media Centre. Monographs published occasionally.


Pacific Journalism Review … Since 1994

Welcome

It is my pleasure to welcome you to this special conference celebrating 20 years of publishing our research journal Pacific

Journalism Review. A copy of the birthday edi-tion marking two decades from when it began in November 1994 is in your conference bag. Another special edition, drawing on papers from this conference, will be published next year.

The Review has an interesting and varied publishing history, having had its home in three universities across the Pacific. The constant in this history is the role of editor. Professor David Robie, New Zealand’s only journalism professor, was the founding editor, establishing the Review at the University of Papua New Guinea. It was published by UPNG between 1994-1998, and then by the University of the South Pacific 1998-2002. But it is here at Auckland University of Technology, where it has come of age with 23 editions having been produced by AUT since 2003 (two editions a year).

It is the only specialist journalism and political studies research journal based in New Zealand. It is also the only one globally that specialises in Asia-Pacific with an emphasis on the Pacific. The recognition of the status of the journal by SCOPUS, the academic metrics agency, with an impact factor rating, and its indexing at many international databases give further testimony to the quality and value of the publication.

We are delighted to have gathered together this group of wonderful speakers


and writers from around the region in Auckland for the conference, including Timor-Leste’s investigative journalist and documentary maker Max Stahl, ABS-CBN investigative television journalist; Ces Oreña-Drilon from the Philippines; and Fiji’s Ricardo Morris, who is editor-in-chief of Repúblika magazine and president of the Fijian Media Association.

These stalwarts of Asia-Pacific journalism have been serving the interests of the region for many years and participants also include many of the journal’s past and current co-editors and edition contributors, and editors of other journals such as the Australian Journalism Review editor Professor Ian Richards from the University of South Australia.

We are proud to welcome our speakers and visitors to the conference and to be marking this publication milestone. Congratulations to Professor Robie and his team, the Pacific Media Centre, and the School of Communication Studies, and best wishes for the next two decades serving the communities of the Pacific.

Professor Desna JuryDean Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies Auckland University of Technology


Welcome to the PJR conference

Welcome to this c o n f e r e n c e which marks

the 20th anniversary of the Pacific Journalism Review. The Review and the Pacific Media Centre are impor-tant to the School of Com-munication Studies and to AUT University—and not just for the usual academic reasons. They have a de-served established reputation in the field of Pacific journalism scholarship but are also marked by their active engagement in Pacific media issues.

To us within the School this is crucial. The distinctiveness of the School of Communication Studies is that it has grown from a base of journalism and com-munications tuition and has been staffed in our practice courses by teachers who come from the media and communication worlds. We do not teach journalism studies but are committed to ‘hands-on’ journalism practice. This is expressed through our news websites, publications and staff outputs. We are an ‘active’ School which understands that good journalism has to not only be practised but fought for and defended.

The PJR and the Pacific Media Centre exemplify this. We do not just study journalism in the Pacific but have an active publication which addresses the


issues, problems and journalism experiences in the region. We do not merely watch the news unfold in the region, we report on it. We do not just analyse films and documentaries in the region, we support their production.

I have used the term ‘we’ in the above statements but I am only too aware that it is David Robie supported by a small team (including his partner) to whom we are indebted that all this activity is part of our School. David’s personal energy and enthusiasm for his subject is the reason why the PJR can mark its 20th anniversary with this conference. It is not just a conference but also a celebra-tion—and I trust that this will be an essential part of the next few days.

Dr Alan Cocker Head of School School of Communication Studies


Political journalism in the Asia-Pacific

Kia ora tātou

Welcome to Aotearoa and AUT University for this timely and challenging conference.

Twenty years ago this month, the first edition of the research journal Pacific Journalism Review emerged from the Uni-versity of Papua New Guinea. Since then, the journal has grown from strength to strength, particularly since it was adopted by AUT University in 2002 and has been published here for the past 12 years. As well as nurturing Pacific journalism and media research, the publication took over as leading New Zealand journal in this field with the eclipse of the New Zealand Journalism Review at Canterbury University, published there for nine years (1988-1997).

Something of a cross between Australian Journalism Review and Index on Cen-sorship in its early style, PJR was immediately confronted with issues over freedom of expression and ethics from the very first edition. The cover featured a gag on Papua New Guinea’s public broadcaster, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), as it was then, preventing reports on New Guinea islands’ political leaders discussing possible secession. A political cartoon, already a distinctive feature of PJR, was displayed on the cover, drawn by Jada of Word Publishing. As acting head of UPNG’s South Pacific Centre for Communication and Information in Development, Margaret Obi, penned in a message to PJR:


This first issue of Pacific Journalism Review offers a smorgasbord of jour-nalistic skills ... of issues current, retrospective and concurrent on com-munication and information, some more contentious than others, such as ‘ecological genocide’. But the issue that is most prevalent in PJR is that of professional ethics, responsibility and accountability by journalists and media agencies, and their role in informing and being informed without fear or favour.

To celebrate this 20-year publishing milestone, PJR and the Pacific Media Centre are hosting this three-day ‘Political journalism in the Asia-Pacific’ conference at AUT University on 27-29 November 2014. Selected and peer-reviewed papers presented at this conference will then be published in a special souvenir book edi-tion of the journal to be published in May next year.

This will also include an analysis of the journal’s two decades of publica-tion by Dr Lee Duffield, one of the editorial board members and co-editor of the November edition. Reading through the archive of articles published in the PJR, he says some essentials have not changed since the first edition: originality, a ‘Pacific’ character he is looking forward to explaining, and honest scholarship. His analysis does note the development of the journal’s academic standing and expansion of its readership in widening circles, though still rightly concentrated in its South Pacific base. He is working on a description of the editorial stance of the PJR, describing it, pro tem, as ‘not so much left, right or liberal, as very “journalistic” in character’. This description will be shared in full in one of the presentations at the conference.

We are especially pleased to welcome our chief keynote speakers: politi-cal journalist and film maker Max Stahl (Timor-Leste), ABS-CBN television investigative journalist Ces Oreña-Drilon (Philippines), Repúblika publisher, editor-in-chief Ricardo Morris (Fiji) and Barbara Dreaver (New Zealand). Also welcomed are New Zealand featured film makers Jim Marbrook (Cap Bocage), Professor Annie Goldson (a Dotcom project) and Alister Barry (Hot Air).

Among many PJR co-editors, contributors and editorial board members who have made the journey from afar for this conference are Professor Wendy Bacon (Frontline investigative series editor), Professor Chris Nash, Professor Mark Pearson, Associate Professor Trevor Cullen, Shailendra Singh, Pat Craddock, cartoonist Malcolm Evans, and Australian Journalism Review editor Professor Ian Richards. Both digital and mounted displays of Malcolm Evans cartoons are a feature of this conference and we are grateful to Malcolm for donating copies of


New Zealand Political Cartoons Annual as a gift to delegates. We have a delegation of media educators who have travelled from Denmark (Danish School of Media and Journalism) and Finland (Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki) as part of the Inclusive Journalism Initiative collaboration. Also, several Māori and Pasifika doctoral students are presenting papers about their media research at this conference.

Thank you for your support and we hope you enjoy your stay in New Zealand —along with the documentaries, ideas, keynotes and papers being shared on top-ics as wide-ranging as asylum seekers in the Pacific, climate change politics, Fiji’s transition to a ‘democracy’, media freedom in East Timor, Philippines media and the climate of impunity over the deaths of journalists, West Papua human rights abuses, and the implications of the contemporary surveillance state for journalists.

Kia ora ra.

Professor David Robie Conference convenor and editor, Pacific Journalism Review

Organising Committee: Professor Barry King (documentaries) Dr Philip Cass (papers, Unitec) Tui O’Sullivan Jim Marbrook Del Abcede Dr Allison Oosterman Dr Rukhsana Aslam Isabella Rasch (PMC Advisory Board chair) 27 November 2014


A publishing commitment to the Pacific regionThe conference opening address by Walter Fraser

I am delighted to be here and to see so many familiar faces—including for-mer colleagues and friends from my time at the University of Auckland and the University of the South Pacific. On behalf of our Vice-Chancellor,

Derek McCormack, I would like to extend our warm Pacific greetings and wel-come to New Zealand, to Auckland (the largest Polynesian city in the world) and to AUT University.

It is also my great pleasure to welcome you all to the Political Journalism in the Asia-Pacific con-ference.

As you will all know, this con-ference also marks the 20th anniver-sary of the Pacific Journalism Review.

Earlier this year, I was listening to a local radio station as I was stuck in traffic, as one normally is in Auckland, and the radio announcer said that the 40th Anniversary Special Edition of John Lennon’s Imagine had just been released and he began to play it. As the song played, it triggered clear memories for me of a distinct moment in history, as though it was only yesterday.

I am sure that we all have those moments. For some, it might have been when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, for others it might have been when humankind landed on the moon, or when the Berlin Wall came down. First issueMost of us will remember where we were, when the World Trade Centre was attacked. For Professor Robie and some others here, it might have been the mo-ment they held the very first issue of the Pacific Journalism Review in their hands.

For me, John Lennon’s Imagine always takes me back to 14 May 1987—I


was driving my white Suzuki Vitara up Moto’otua Road in Samoa and it was a little after 12 noon. An old friend of mine, Ulafala Aiavao, who was a radio journalist at the time for Radio 2AP in Samoa, had just interrupted the airwaves with news that there had been a military coup in Suva.

I distinctly remember pulling off to the side of the road next to Apia’s An-glican Church in utter shock. I still clearly remember Fala’s tone of voice—he sounded like he was reading a funeral notice. When he finished, he played Len-non’s Imagine and dedicated it to the people of Fiji.

I had heard and hummed that song hundreds of times before, but never really paid attention to the lyrics as I did that hot sunny afternoon in Apia.

In more ways than one, the political events in Fiji since that fateful day, have had a profound effect on political journalism in the Pacific. Many of my contemporaries who worked as journalists in Fiji at the time, paid dearly for de-fending the Fourth Estate. They were unified in their views and they vehemently defended the right to call things as they saw it—a spade was a spade, black was black and white was white.

Similarly, the political upheaval of 2000 with George Speight, found a new generation of journalists, many of whom were Professor Robie’s journalism students at the University of the South Pacific, again risking their lives to ensure that we all received news.

Again, unified in reporting the events as they saw it—striving to be impartial, as it were. By this time, I was working here in Auckland and I re-member logging in keenly to read the regular internet updates from these students on their Pacific Journalism Online website at USP. Unlike in 1987, this time we were not limited to print or broadcasts. We also had the internet.

Digital platformsNot long after, I returned to Fiji to work as Registrar for the University of the South Pacific. I was there in 2006, when the Voreqe Bainimarama coup oc-curred. Unlike previous upheavals, this time the medium for the disbursement of information was vastly different. We now had a much wider range of digital platforms—blog sites, Facebook, Twitter and the like—through which a myriad of views could be expressed easily and speedily and with a relative lack of censor-ship and/or ethical or professional standards.

In his address, delivered as the Andrew Olle 2010 Lecture, British journalist and editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, said:


Virtually every adult over the age of 30 grew up with the idea that the Fourth Estate consisted of just two parts—press and broadcasting. Each was owned, financed and regulated in different ways and each gave rise to different ideas of what journalism was.There was much to cherish in the balances and tensions inherent in this duopoly. A reader or viewer could measure the message of one medium against the other. There was the tent peg of attempted impartiality by which to measure the Wild West of the printed word.But now there’s a new kid on the block. You could even argue there are two new kids on the block—the original world wide web (es-sentially another form of transmission) and web 2.0, the advent and rapid maturing of so-called social, or open media. No one owns the digital space and it is barely regulated. It brings with it an en-tirely new idea of what journalism is-indeed, for some, it calls into question whether there is any such distinct thing as ‘journalism�. This double revolution within just over 20 years is having a dramatic effect on the accepted norms and categorisations of information. We are seeing the splintering of the Fourth Estate.

In terms of the Pacific, in my view, this ‘splintering� has also been manifested in the numerous rival regional media groupings that have emerged in the recent past and the tensions that frequently call into question their own ability to remain impartial and ethical. I see from the programme of the conference, that there will be many sessions that will allow a much fuller discussion and debate of some of these issues.

Successful positioningThis backdrop, despite the bias of my Fijian lens, resonates well with any tribute that one might pay to the Pacific Journalism Review. Over the last 20 years, the journal has successfully positioned itself as a quality publication, where those committed to the development and advancement of the Pacific Island region can find a platform to debate Pacific media issues.

I first met Professor Robie when I went to USP at the beginning of 2001 and attended an event to celebrate the success at the Ossie Awards of those very students who reported on the 2000 Fiji coup. Now I find myself at an event, where we are not only paying tribute to 20 years of the Pacific Journalism Review but we also celebrate yet more of his students winning Ossie Awards—but this time for their coverage of Fiji’s democratic elections.

There is fortuitous and poetic serendipity and synergy in the timing of all of


this, and, the threads of issues and topics that have been interwoven throughout the programme of this conference certainly reflect the rich and colourful tapestry that is PJR.

I warmly congratulate those involved with the PJR on your 20th anniversary and I wish you, the conference speakers and attendees all the very best for a pro-ductive and inspiring three days here at AUT. It is now my privilege and great honour to declare the Political Journalism in the Asia-Pacific conference open.

Walter FraserHead of Pacific AdvancementAUT UniversityAucklandNew Zealand


The maturing of a research journalMessage from the Vice -Chancellor

Thank you, Professor David Robie and good afternoon everybody. Welcome to this celebration.

We do have something very signifi-cant to celebrate: 20 years of successful publication of the only peer-reviewed, New Zealand-based journalism and media research journal, Pacific Journal-ism Review. The journal is also the only one, globally, that specialises in journalism in Asia-Pacific—with the emphasis on the Pacific. As the world’s economic focus continues to shift to this region, the journal can only become even more important.

The Pacific Journalism Review was actually founded by the University of Papua New Guinea, with the first edition published in November 1994. Pub-lication was taken over in 1998 by the University of the South Pacific, and in 2003 AUT assumed the responsibility. So far, 23 editions have been produced by AUT—two each year.

Despite three different universities publishing the journal over its first 20 years, the editor has remained unchanged. Professor David Robie, the founding editor, headed the journalism programmes at the University of Papua New Guinea and then at the University of the South Pacific, before we were fortunate enough to bring him to AUT, where he is Professor of Journalism in the School of Com-munications. This journal is his baby and he deserves the lion’s share of the credit.

But, as we all know, it’s almost impossible to sustain such achievement on


your own. Professor Robie has been ably assisted and supported over the years by a dedicated editorial team, and it’s tremendous to have so many of the journal’s past co-editors and contributors with us today for this celebration.

David, I congratulate you and your team—past and present—on this con-siderable achievement. At 20 years of age, I guess we can say the journal has now matured from a youthful adolescent into a mature adult.

Now, we have decided to mark this anniversary—not with a cake, but—with a specially-commissioned cartoon of the editorial team. The cartoon was drawn by the former NZ Cartoonist of the Year, Malcolm Evans and it is magnificent.

So, it is my pleasure to present this celebratory cartoon to you, Professor Robie and to your team. Could the team all please come up here for a photo with the cartoon?

Again, my congratulations on the first 20 years. And best wishes for the next 20.

Derek McCormack Vice-Chancellor AUT University Auckland New Zealand


Pacific Journalism Review—a tributeBy Professor Ian Richards, Australian Journalism Review editor

I am delighted to be able to join you to celebrate this major milestone in

the development of Pacific Journalism Review.

But before I say more about that, I would like to extend my congratulations to Auckland University of Technology for winning the bid to host the 2016 World Journalism Education Congress. As an executive member of the WJEC, I can say unequivocally that this a great achievement for AUT and for Associate Professor Verica Rupar, who led the AUT bid.

Today, however, we are here to honour a very successful academic journal. In doing so, a logical starting point might be to ask: what is an academic journal?

One good definition is that a journal is ‘a vehicle of scholarly communica-tion where the latest thinking and research can be disseminated, discussed and reviewed, to and by others in the same field’. I’m pleased to say that PJR fits this description very well, and has done so for two decades.

The next question we might ask is: what is an editor? I believe it was T. S. Eliot who once remarked that ‘all editors are failed writers’, before adding—‘but then, so are most writers’. I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourselves whether David Robie and I fit this description.

Journal editors are often described as gatekeepers, but I prefer ‘enablers’ because we enable academics and researchers to have their work published. We provide a platform for sharing the fruits of their research, and, indeed, we also provide a specialised audience for this research.

In general, as journal editors, we have many common issues to contend with. These include:


• Limited time and resources—good editing requires both, but both are not always available.

• A rapidly increasing number of submissions—apart from an associated increase in workload, this also raises issues of quality because, unfortu-nately, more papers does not necessarily mean more quality.

• Increased pressure from authors for quick responses: Greater pressure on academics to publish means greater pressure on editors from authors who want to know if their work will see the light of day—or, alterna-tively, if it needs to be submitted elsewhere in order to do so.

• Reviewer issues: Quality and consistency are ongoing concerns. Good reviewers not only need to know their field, but they also need to be reliable, capable, able to meet deadlines, and—when necessary—able to reject papers in terms which are balanced rather than brutal. Review-ers, too, have heavy workloads, so it is also important not to overload particular reviewers because they might be particularly good at it.

• Transparency: Plagiarism and copyright infringement are only two of the dangers lurking in the world of the academic paper.

• Publication and circulation: Editors have to deal with matters of fund-ing, as well as editorial boards, lawyers (on occasion), and issues involv-ing database access and commercial publishers.

• Institutional constraints: Most editors are employed by universities, and thus have to meet institutional requirements and demands. These are not always conducive to editing an academic journal.

These matters affect most, if not all, journal editors. But in addition, there are a few pressures which are faced by just a few of us, including David and myself, and we have to respond to them as best we can.

When I say ‘we’, I am reminded of Mark Twain’s observation that ‘only kings, presidents, and people with tapeworm have the right to use “we”’—but I think it’s okay here.

Many of these extra pressures are a product of our geography and history. Australia and New Zealand are economically and politically part of the Global North, but we are so far from the US and Europe that many of us feel we are living on the periphery.

This feeling is exacerbated by a lingering inheritance from colonial days of what in Australia we call the ‘cultural cringe’ , meaning that things produced


in the northern hemisphere are somehow automatically considered to be better than things produced in the southern hemisphere.

This unjustified feeling of inferiority is behind many of the debates about whether our local journals are as good as ‘international’ journals. And in most cases, the latter are really only the northern hemisphere’s version of ‘local’ jour-nals anyway.

Also related to the realities of geography is the fact that—for obvious rea-sons—most academics ground their research in situations with which they are most familiar. This often means they produce articles which are extremely local.

But if ‘local’ means London or Paris or New York, then it’s much easier to present your work as ‘international’ than if you live in Port Villa or Pago Pago, or, for that matter, Auckland or Adelaide.

At the same time, many authors based in the Global South have to contend with obstacles which are unknown in the Global North, meaning everything from limited access to computers and inadequate infrastructure to frequent power blackouts, physical danger and political instability.

Finally, there is what I would describe as plain old-fashioned ignorance on the part of many of our colleagues in the Global North. As a demonstration of this, earlier this year I was discussing possible venues for the 2016 WJEC with northern hemisphere colleagues. When I mentioned that New Zealand was a contender for the event, which is only held every three years, one of them said something to the effect that—‘Well, WJEC was in Singapore in 2007, so that part of the world has had its turn’.

These colleagues were shocked when I pointed out that the distance from Auckland to Singapore is about 8500 kilometres. By comparison:

• London to Moscow is 2500 kilometres.• London to New York 5500 kilometres.• London to New Delhi 6700 kilometres.• London to San Francisco 8600 kilometres—only 100 kilometres fur-

ther than Auckland to Singapore.

PJR has successfully negotiated a way through all of these pressures and prob-lems. It has matured immensely as it has moved from the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby to the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, and eventually to New Zealand and the Pacific Media Centre here at AUT.

It has consistently published papers relating not only to New Zealand, but


also to Australia as well as the huge area of the globe known as Oceania. In doing so, it has helped address the gross imbalance in academic publishing between the Global North and the Global South and—along the way—also demonstrated the validity of journalism practice as a research methodology.

In short, PJR is a very successful journal which continues to play a vital role publishing papers from and about this part of the world.

Throughout its two decades of existence, the journal has been edited by the indefatigable David Robie, who recently—and deservedly—was appointed New Zealand’s first professor of journalism. The success of PJR is a tribute to David’s commitment, talent and dogged perseverance.

Congratulations, David, and congratulations to all of your colleagues who have helped bring about this success.

Best of luck for the next 20 years!

Professor Ian RichardsEditor, Australian Journalism ReviewUniversity of South Australia, Adelaide.


Fiji media regulation: Emerging from ‘worst of times’ to ‘best of times’?Day 2 morning keynote address by Ricardo Morris

Most of you will be familiar with the media environment in Fiji over these years before the elec-

tion, but I hope to give you a bit more insight into the kinds of experiences we have had in the lead-up to and after the general election in September. Some of those experiences have been documented in Pacific Journalism Review and I would like to pay tribute to Professor David Ro-bie for his important contribution over the years to Pacific journalism education and development.

Perhaps an apt description of the me-dia environment that has been bequeathed to Fiji as a result of the eight years of mili-tary rule since 2006 can be found in the opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’ work A Tale of Two Cities. They are words that, although written 155 years ago, can describe many of the social and political conditions in our world today, although for me it rings true for Fiji.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of in-credulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

The theme of my talk this morning is on the post-election environment in Fiji, how we got to this point and what needs to be done to improve it. While


I’m speaking here in a personal capacity as a journalist and editor of Repúblika magazine, I also stand here as an advocate for my media colleagues in Fiji who elected me in June as president of the newly formed Fijian Media Association.

For years the media fraternity in Fiji had tried to organise ourselves, but as we found out, media folk can be notoriously difficult to corral. In fact we had begun our attempts to organise well before the 2006 coup that changed everything. For a brief period in 2004-2005, a chapter of the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association was established but then soon lost momentum and was forgotten.

The media industry in Fiji during those years had fractured on many levels. It was not uncommon for some journalists not to talk to or socialise with others over perceived or real slights or differences of opinion. And the now-defunct Fiji Media Council was accused of failing to handle ethical lapses and controversies satisfactorily or fast enough. The Fiji Media Council had been set up by the owners and editorial managers of most of the country’s major media organisations in the 1990s and had gone some way in the development of the industry, but ultimately it was not enough.

We were divided and it can be argued that such division was one reason it was easy for the military government to bring into force the Media Industry De-velopment Decree in 2010. The government justified its actions with reference to some of the unscrupulous journalism practices that should rightly be condemned. And I should point out here that the Fiji Media Council’s legacy does live on in the form of the code of ethics for media workers embedded in the media decree.

We realised a bit too late that we were all in this together despite our personal political views or those of the companies that we worked for. United we stand, divided we fall.

So it is a positive sign of the yearning by Fiji’s media workers for an organisa-tion that would speak in their defence when not many would (or could), and an organisation that would provide opportunities for continued learning, professional development and camaraderie.

From early on in his rule, the Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, had said that a media law would be brought into place to improve standards and practices in the industry. In early 2010, a draft media decree was presented to editors and managers gathered at the Holiday Inn in Suva. We were given about two hours to read through the document before the Attorney-General came to discuss the provisions with us. Although he said he wanted to hear our feedback he prefaced it with the words: ‘This is not a debate.’


When the decree was finally gazetted some months later, we found that he had taken on board some of the feedback, for example by reducing the fines and jail terms for breaches, but many of the more worrying provisions remained espe-cially that relating to content which could be deemed in breach of the ‘national interest’—a blanket term that is not defined and could be interpreted at will.

Thus began the era of media regulation in Fiji. If the media were subdued after the 2006 takeover and especially after the

abrogation of the 1997 Constitution in 2009, it was truly intimidated when the media decree came into effect in 2010.

And who could blame us? For many it was simply a bread-and-butter issue. Do we continue to report views and issues critical of the government—no mat-ter how constructive—and risk a breach that could potentially land an editor or journalist with a fine of up to $10,000 and/or up to two years in jail and the media company a fine of up to $100,000? Or do we adopt pragmatism and self-censorship and live another day?

A tragic result of the repressive media environment has been the huge brain drain within the industry. Many of the best and experienced media workers have left or been forced out. And in fact Australia and New Zealand have benefitted by the migration of some of Fiji’s senior media workers from as far back as 1987, and more so in the past eight years. Those who have remained have either been moved to non-controversial roles or mellowed to the point of silence.

Apart from the provisions of the media decree, other rules and regulations are being used to keep the media in check. Fiji Television has a noose around its neck with the company only being granted a licence for six months at a time. Compare this with the state-owned Fiji Broadcasting Corporation whose chief executive is Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, the brother of the Attorney-General. FBC TV has a 12-year licence and is also exempt from the cross-media prohibitions in the media decree.

Just recently during the IRB Gold Coast Rugby Sevens tournament, Fiji TV was forced to share with FBC TV live feed of the matches for which it had the rights. They were compelled to do so under the Television (Cross-Carriage of Designated Events) Decree 2014. Under this decree, free-to-air television stations must share any event designated under the decree as an important national one.

The smallest of Fiji’s three commercial TV stations, Mai TV (for which I have worked) was forced to take the feed—even though it did not want to and had no advertising or sponsorship to run it. It also had to fork out a reported


$50,000 for its share of the costs involved. Not only did this have an impact on the TV companies involved, it left viewers of free-to-air television with no other choice but to watch rugby sevens all weekend. This is truly ironic when you consider that one of the objects of the decree is to ‘ensure the availability of a comprehensive range of quality television services in Fiji’.

Apart from the impact of all sorts of decrees and regulations on media companies, the environment that the media decree has created is not conducive to the practice of truly robust and critical journalism. Sometimes you get the impression that everybody with a little power to excise will unreasonably limit journalists in their work. And it’s not only locals doing it.

Just last week, during the visit of the Chinese President Xi Jinping, only the Chinese journalists accompanying him were allowed in the room while he ad-dressed the Pacific leaders he was meeting in Nadi. Two veteran local journalists, Makereta Komai of Pacnews and Dennis Rounds, stringing for Islands Business, who tried to defy the ban on non-Chinese journalists, were removed by Chinese security from the room at Denarau. They were not even allowed to listen to an interpretation of the speech on headphones. Instead, they were told to get the official transcript off Xinhua News Agency. Even in our own country, foreign officials can exert their will on the media.

There is also the fear that hangs over journalists and their media companies. Fear of breaching the decree and perhaps catching a fine, which could very well cripple any media company. This is even more so for small, independent media operators and the overall outcome is that many times the journalism presented to the people of Fiji is bland and unexciting. Infotainment and puff pieces can be safer and more profitable.

Of course, not all media companies face this fear. It is well known that the Fiji Sun newspaper is unconditionally supportive of Bainimarama’s vision for a ‘new Fiji’ and will consistently praise any policies of the government and denounce anybody with a differing view. And if you’re bestowed with an ‘anti-Fiji’ or ‘anti-government’ label by the Fiji Sun, it can make life and business very difficult.

Companies that feel you are somehow ‘anti-government’ will steer clear of your media outlet, not because they don’t believe in what you’re doing, but be-cause the ramifications for any business seen to be supporting a perceived ‘anti’ media company can be damaging.

The Fiji Sun has been richly rewarded for its loud and proud support of Bainimarama’s government. Almost all government advertisements and those of


government commercial entities are placed exclusively in the Fiji Sun. This was done to punish The Fiji Times for its perceived anti-government stance in the years after the military takeover. In recent times, though, some government ads have begun appearing again in the Times.

So how would I summarise the media environment in post-election Fiji? I have the assistance of a veteran colleague here when I describe it as ‘only slightly more informative than before the election’. The provisions of the media decree still pose hazards that journalists and their editors must negotiate every day in a bid to have more balanced and open reporting.

The issue of balance, while a vital component of solid and ethical reporting, has often been used in a cynical way by some officials and government entities. Because they know that a provision of the media decree compels journalists to seek balancing comments before publishing any critical story, by not responding to questions from journalists seeking comment they can effectively kill a story. Editors will not risk running a story without the requisite balancing comment no matter how justified in the public interest or how long they’ve waited for a reply.

We have recently began Parliamentary sessions and for the majority of those involved—from the Speaker, to MPs, the Secretary-General and journalists covering Parliament—it is a new experience. Learning parliamentary procedure and understanding the Standing Orders will take some time to master but we’re getting there. In the meantime, the effects of dictatorship still hang over much of the process.

For example, the Auditor-General’s reports covering the years 2007-2013 were laid before Parliament by the Attorney-General and Finance Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. The reports, of course, had been highly anticipated for many years.

The 29 volumes reveal quite a lot about how the government departments spent taxpayers’ money during the years of military rule. In some of the reports, the Auditor-General highlighted dealings with government departments by the Nur Bano Ali, an aunt of the Attorney-General.

She had been given a contract to organise a strategic planning workshop for Fiji’s dairy cooperative for which she was paid $35,450. According to the Auditor-General her company was then later appointed without tender to restructure the dairy factory for its ultimate sale. The Auditor-General highlighted the fact that no tender was sought for this restructure consultancy for which Nur Bano’s company was paid $562,500.

Last week, Nur Bano, along with a hardware company that was also named


in relation to a separate issue—took out a full-page advertisement in the Fiji Sun threatening to sue the Auditor-General along with The Fiji Times, Communica-tions Fiji Limited (which is Fiji’s largest private broadcaster) and the state-owned Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, unless they retracted and apologised. She also threatened to report those companies to the media authority for what she said was ‘unfair reporting’. In the same edition, the Fiji Sun featured the legal threat as the front-page story and referred to the advertisement inside the paper.

If that legal threat and Fiji Sun’s reporting of it are anything to go by then parliamentary privilege does not seem to exist in Fiji’s new democracy.

What I have described above is but a small snapshot of the myriad issues the media industry and journalists face in Fiji today. It may seem gloomy, but I am an eternal optimist and I can tell you I feel hopeful about the prospects for Fiji’s media.

Perhaps one glimmer of hope is right there in the Constitution given to us last year. Section 25 guarantees access to information and a Freedom of Information Bill is likely to be brought soon before Parliament. When it is enacted, this law will open the doors for all sorts of public interest reporting and hopefully compel government officials to be accountable and fair in all their dealings.

Many of Fiji’s journalists, while they may be young and had never covered an election until September, are aware of the contradictions they have to deal with in their work every day. There’s also the sense that things will start to change if they persist in their role of holding our leaders to account and speaking truth to power. We are moving on, but with eyes wide open.

The media decree must be drastically revised or done away with altogether if the media in Fiji is to be truly free and regain the vibrancy it was once known for.

Which brings us to education and professional development. It has already been noted that the majority of young journalists in Fiji today have never worked in a completely free media environment. Many of them have grown up in a dic-tatorship and the repressive environment that it entails for the media and have known nothing else. Now more than ever we need journalists who know the craft, are well versed with the laws that govern our work and the context in which they work. If journalists stay well informed about issues, they will be able to develop the self-confidence to stand up to any threats or violations against them and be able to faithfully serve the public that depends on us for reliable and compelling news, analysis and commentary.

The Fijian Media Association, in creating a profile for ourselves, will look to


develop on-going training opportunities in which we will play a big part design-ing and organising. We realise that going on fully-funded workshops in which we had no input in planning may not the best way to develop a sustainable and self-confident media corp. We need to take ownership of our own destiny and this will involve working with partners but ultimately determining what is best for us and how to go about achieving it.

At the end of October, I was privileged to speak at the University of the South Pacific’s journalism awards. In that speech I quoted the American television cor-respondent Ann Curry, who described journalism as an ‘act of faith in the future’. Journalism, she argued, should do more than inform. It should make you care.

That is what inspires me every day, and perhaps that’s where my optimism springs from: the knowledge that journalism done right can hold such power to change lives and make governments apprehensive for no more than the words and images we use to inform and make people care.

So while Fiji’s post-election realities may seem like ‘the worst of times’, the ‘best of times’ is certainly on the horizon.

Ricardo MorrisEditor and publisher of RepúblikaPresident of the Fijian Media AssociationSuvaFiji


PROGRAMME

Day 1: Date: Thursday, 27 November 2014 Venue: WG126, Sir Paul Reeves Building, AUT’s City Campus

Time Session

8.00 -

8.45

Registration WG126

8.45 -

9.00

Mihi Whakatau ‐ AUT Tangata Whenua WG126

9.00 -

9.30

Introduction Opening remarks, welcome: Professor David Robie, PMC director, PJR editor and conference convenor Opening: Walter Fraser, AUT University’s Head of Pacific Advancement Sasya Wreksono: Screening of new video mini-documentary The Life of Pacific Journalism Review (10min) YouTube link @ PJR: www.pjreview.info WG126

9.30 -

10.00

Keynote A1: Political and investigative journalism in the Asia-Pacific region: Impunity in the Philippines: “Losing the Maguindanao massacre case?” Convenor: Professor David Robie(PMC)/Rebecca Palmer (Asia New Zealand Foundation) ‐ Ces Oreña-Drilon (Philippines - investigative television journalist from ABS-CBN) Replaced by Del Abcede of the Pacific Media Centre as keynote speaker due to Ms Drilon's family bereavement. WG126


Time Session

10.00 -

10.45

Plenary A2: Snapshots of Asia-Pacific media freedom and issues -Convenor: Dr Philip Cass

Ricardo Morris (President, Fijian Media Association, Fiji),

Barbara Dreaver (Television NZ Pacific correspondent, Kiribati-NZ) WG126

10.45 -

11.00

COFFEE BREAK WG128 FOYER

11.00 -

12.30

Plenary A3: Asylum seekers, surveillance and shield laws Convenor: Professor Barry King Professor Mark Pearson: Suppression, sentences, surveillance, security and cynical spin: Is Australia an emerging Secret State? Professor Wendy Bacon: Covering intelligence in Australia - Journalism as handmaiden of the state? Associate Professor Joseph Fernandez: Confidential sources and the shield laws highwire WG126

12.30 -

1.00

LUNCH BREAK WG128 FOYER

1.00 -

2.15

Session A4: Fiji elections and press freedom Convenor: Shailendra Singh Pat Craddock: University journalism casualties: A Fiji case study in free speech Eliki Drugunalevu and Irene Manueli: Media freedom in Fiji: Journalism challenges facing an independent, campus-based, student newspaper Jane Verbitsky: NZ, Fiji, the ‘return to democracy’ election 2014, and science diplomacy WG608

Session A5: Asia-Pacific censorship and digital media Convenor: A/Prof Camille Nakhid Amy Forbes: Marcos and censorship: fairy tales of the Marcos years Del Abcede and David Robie: Cybercrime, criminal libel and the media: From ‘e-martial law’ to the Magna Carta in the Philippines WG609


Time Session

2.15 -

3.30

Session A6: Environmental journalism - Climate change Convenor: Kayt Davies Dr Chris Nash: ‘Atolls in the ocean – canaries in the mine’: Australian journalism about the impact of climate change in the Pacific Evangelia Papoutsaki, Sandra Kailahi and Usha Harris: Communicating climate change, disaster and crisis in the Pacific: A regional appraisal WG608

Session A7: Cultural representations 1 Convenor: A/Prof Camille Nakhid Steve Elers: Conducting research with Māori: Experiences, reflections and lessons from a communication studies PhD Ayla Hoeta: Social media support Rangatahi Online whānau identity Jessica Paul: The dangerous meme: Exploring representations of Māori on Facebook WG609

3.30 - 3.45


3.45 -

5.00

Session A8: Plenary: Twenty Years of Pacific Journalism Review Convenor: Professor Wendy Bacon Dr Lee Duffield: Research paper: Twenty years of PJR PJR political cartoonist Malcolm Evans: Challenges for political cartooning Other contributions from editors and contributors WG126

5.00 -

6.00

WINE AND CHEESE WELCOME FROM THE SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION STUDIESWG 128

5.30pm: Candlelight vigil for the victims of the Ampatuan/Maguindanao massacre. Organised by Del Abcede

6.00 -

8.00

Session A9: Documentary screening Cap Bocage (New Caledonia) Jim Marbrook (AUT) – new documentary supported by the Pacific Media Centre. Introduction and Q & A at the end. Facilitator: Professor Barry King WG126


Day 2: PJR 20th Anniversary Conference Date: Friday, 28 November 2014 Venue: WG126, Sir Paul Reeves Building, AUT’s City Campus

Time Session

8.30 -

9.00Registration, WelcomeWG128

9.00 -

9.30

Plenary BI Keynote: Fiji media realities post-elections Ricardo Morris (Editor, Repúblika) Convenor: Professor David Robie WG126

9.30 -

10.30

Plenary B2 Panel: Asia-Pacific politics, citizen journalism and democracys Convenor: Dr Philip Cass Shailendra Singh: (Fiji) Media laws and political journalism in Fiji Nick Chesterfield (West Papua): Overcoming media mythmaking, malignancies and dangerous conduct in West Papua reportage WG126

10.30 -

10.45


10.45 -

11.30

Plenary B3: Caught in the web: Issues from the Dotcom case 3 - Convenor: Professor Barry KingProfessor Annie Goldson WG126

11.30 -

12.30

Plenary B4: Issues for NZ and Asia-Pacific documentary making Convenor: Professor Barry King Peter Thompson Jim Marbrook Alister BarryWG126


Time Session

12.30

- 1.00LUNCH BREAK WG128 FOYER

12.00 - 2.00

PARALLEL SESSION: Auckland City Library, Lorne St (5min from AUT)•Dr Philip Cass speaking on democracy

and media in the Pacific• Flavourz 2014 video

1.00 -

2.15

Session B5: Contemporary conflict reporting issues Convenor: Professor Mark Pearson Maire Leadbeater: Conflict on West Papua: The contrast between historic and contemporary media coverage in New Zealand Steve Ellmers: A tale of two statues: Contemporary conflict reporting constraints and the Battle of Baghdad WG803

Session B6: Cultural Representations 2 Convenor: Dr Jane Verbitsky Chris Thomson & Bonita Mason: Why the where matters: A sense of place imperative for teaching better Indigenous affairs reporting Khairiah A. Rahman: Dialogue and persuasion in the Islamic tradition: Implications for journalism Arjun Rajkhowa: Popular politics and divergent claims of national unity WG606

2.15 -

3.30

Session B7: Journalism education Convenor: A/Professor Trevor Cullen Lyn Barnes & Elesha Edmonds: ‘If it bleeds, it leads’: Changing death coverage in The NZ Herald Verica Rupar: Journalism education and the concept of inclusive society Nasya Bahfen & Alex Wake: Tweeting, friending and reporting: Social media use among journalism academics, students and graduates in the Asia-Pacific WG803

Session B8: Environmental and political journalism Convenor: Professor Chris Nash Kayt Davies: The logging of ‘cloud forest’ on the island of Kolombangara: An investigative case study Nicole Gooch: Investigating violent environmental protest in New Caledonia's south against the Vale nickel refinery: The Goro mine as a case study Ruth Callaghan: Classroom curation – using storify.com as a participatory journalism teaching tool WG606


Time Session

3.30-

3.45COFFEE BREAK WG128 FOYER

3.45 -

5.00

Session B9: Health reporting, e-health and political social media Convenor: A/Prof Camille Nakhid Trevor Cullen: Health reporting in the Pacific - New challenges ahead Phoebe Elers: Online news representations of New Zealand e-Health strategies Rizwangul Nur-Muhammad: Identity construction online: The use of Facebook by the Uygher diaspora WG126

5.00 -

6.00

PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 20th ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION BIRTHDAY DRINKS AND CANAPÉSVice-Chancellor: Derek McCormackEditor: Professor David RobieSpeaker: Professor Ian Richards, Editor, Australian Journalism Review

WG128

6.00 -

8.00

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Max Stahl, UNESCO cine-journalist extraordinaire from Timor-Leste Convenor and introduction: Professor Barry King

‘If you want independence, you’ll eat stones’: A Timor-Leste theatre of intimidation retrospective Reconciliation - Part 1 (an ‘experimental’ documentary and a presentation of a compilation anti-news and news and media coverage in the traumatic birth of a nation. WG126


Day 3: PJR 20th Anniversary Conference Date: Saturday, 29 November 2014 Venue: AUT’s City Campus

Time Session

9.00 -

10.30

Documentary screening C1: Hot Air, a NZ Film festival documentary about New Zealand’s flawed climate change policies. Convenor: Dr Rosser Johnson Introduction by the film maker Alister Barry and Q & A at the end. WG404 (Case Room)

10.30 -

11.00

Plenary C2: Pacific climate change panel in response to Hot Air. Responses led by Professor Chris Nash anf Green MP Catherine Delahunty WG404

11.00 -

11.15


11.15 -

12.30

Screening C3: Flavourz 2014 Film festival and highlights over the years

Introduced by PMC chair Isabella Rasch• Lunchtime dir: Struan Purdie. 2014 Premiere screening• Makings of a Kaitiaki dir Sophie Johnson (2009).• Becoming Samoan dir. Krystal Vaega (2011).

Conference close by PMC chair Isabella Rasch

WG 404

12.30 -

1.00

PACIFIC FAREWELL LUNCH HOSTED IN THE PACIFIC MEDIA CENTRE

WG1028


ABSTRACTSBacon, Wendy: Covering intelligence in Australia—journalism as handmaiden of the state? The research explores Australian media’s coverage of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden’s revelations about Australia’s role in foreign policy and intelligence activities and its coverage of Australia’s security law debates It explores the impli-cations of the findings for Australian democracy. While the Australian media in-dustry professes to play a Fourth Estate role in relation to the state, the evidence shows that large sections of the Australian media play the role of handmaiden in relation to state power. The paper will also discuss the impact of the entry of The Guardian into Australia’s media market on security and intelligence reporting and the role of smaller independent media.

Professor Wendy Bacon is a professorial fellow, journalist and researcher at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, contributing editor at www.newma-tilda.com and Frontline editor at Pacific Journalism Review and on the advisory board of the Pacific Media Centre. Bahfen, Nasya & Alex Wake: Tweeting, friending , reporting: social media use among journalism academics, students and graduates in the Asia-Pacific regionIn 2014, a media school at a Melbourne university established a Facebook pres-ence five years after two of its academics actively began using social media to connect students and graduates with media job vacancies and publishing oppor-tunities in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. The academics were early adopters of Facebook and Twitter communication with students, telling university adminis-trators who warned against such interactions that young people who plan to work in journalism must learn to engage with social media in a professional manner. This reflective paper describes and analyses the use of Facebook and Twitter over a five-year timeframe by young people studying journalism and those two jour-nalism academics in Australia, whose industry and research expertise are in the Asian and Pacific regions. Taking an ethnographic approach to the analysis and using active participant observation as a reflective methodology, the researchers argue that social media can be used to develop and retain links with their students and alumni, by making use of global social connectedness characterising online communication. The use of social media has permitted journalism educators to


engage in an active electronic space to conduct discourse on development, pub-lication, networking and career opportunities with students and alumni. This discourse and the educators, students or alumni who engage in it reflect the nature of the media industry as inherently network-based. Because it operates using electronic communication, such discourse also reflects the industry which journalism graduates seek to enter as not being geographically confined to one city or state within Australia—instead, reflecting a rapid rate of movement be-tween cities and states, or between Australia and neighbouring countries, or between urban and rural locations.

Dr Nasya Bahfen is a senior lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, and a community ambassador with the 2015 Asian Cup and AFL Multicultural Programs. She has taught at the Journalism and Media Centre at UNSW, the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University and the School of Management and Marketing at Deakin University; and was previously a radio and online journalist and producer for ABC Radio Australia, ABC Radio Na-tional, and SBS. Nasya has a doctorate in the sociology of the media, and extensive media and communications teaching and research experience.Alexandra Wake is a lecturer in journalism at RMIT University. She has almost 30 years experience working as a journalist across all mediums but specialising in radio in international settings. She also has more than a decade experience as an educator. Alex holds a Masters of Arts (Research) and is currently working on her PhD in journalism education. Barnes, Lyn & Elesha Edmonds: If it bleeds, it leads?: Changing death coverage in The New Zealand HeraldThe prominence of death has become more visible in the news in the past four decades. Articles about a murder or accident, which in the past may have fea-tured on page five or seven of daily newspapers, now often take up all the front page of The New Zealand Herald. New categories have also emerged, including the threat of death or near death. This is evident from the increase in human interest stories which not only report the details of the incident but also capture emotion. This article follows the increased visibility of death stories on the front page of New Zealand’s largest newspaper, The New Zealand Herald, and inves-tigates how that coverage has changed over time. International scholars have examined the visibility of death in the media closely. However research is sparse


in exactly how this large body of work correlates with New Zealand print media. Therefore this study aims to close this gap by using content analysis to discuss the prominence of death in the New Zealand Herald over four decades from the 1970s, and the reasons for increased coverage of threats of death or near death.

Lyn Barnes is a senior lecturer in journalism at AUT University, New Zealand. She was awarded a fellowship to the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University in 2012. She is a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review.Elesha Edmonds is an Honours student in the Communication Studies programme at AUT University. Following the completion of her Bachelor of Communication Studies in 2013, Elesha studied for six months at the Danish School of Media and Journalism as part of the Inclusive Journalism Initiative (IJI) Scholarship.

DOCUMENTARY: Barry, Alister and Abi King-Jones: Hot Air: Climate Change politics in New Zealand (91min)

In the years since New Zealand politicians began to grapple with climate change, the country’s greenhouse gas emissions have burgeoned. Alister Barry’s doco draws on TV archives and interviews with key participants to find out why. Since 1990, when the National government set a target of 20 percent reduction within 10 years, our green-house gas emissions have burgeoned. Alister Barry’s film identifies the forces arrayed against the scientists, activists and successive ministers for environment and climate change who tried, over the next two decades, to reduce New Zealand’s contribution to the global crisis. This documentary premiered in the NZ International Film Fes-tival in 2014. No one in New Zealand makes more judicious use of the TV archive than Alister Barry, separating the news and current affairs footage from the clutter of broadcast and reasserting its value as permanent record. The parade of climate change deniers he unearths, claiming and being granted their ‘equal time’, may engender tears of rage in rational viewers. And, as any lobbyist knows, a bunch of riled-up farmers protesting a ‘fart tax’ on Queen Street or running a tractor up the steps of Parliament House will not be deflected by mere science. In new interviews, scientists, activists and officials add their commentaries. Three for-mer ministers—Simon Upton, David Parker and a forthright, embattled Pete Hodgson—provide incisive, illuminating accounts. The truth is more inconven-ient than ever.


Alister Barry remains one of that rare breed of New Zealand documentary film-makers: one whose work has regularly won showings on Kiwi cinema screens. Barry’s documentaries reflect his interest in how decisions made by policy-makers and employers have affected or-dinary New Zealanders’ lives. Barry got involved in many of the issues bubbling in the first half of the 1970s—including opposing the Vietnam War, nuclear testing, and All Black tours of South Africa. He decided to put his growing interest in documentary filmmaking to service ‘as a useful contribution to the debates and campaigns’ of the times. In 1973, Barry and his camera joined the crew of a protest boat to Moruroa atoll, where the French government continued to test nuclear weapons. Barry edited the footage into a film in his bedroom. Moru-roa 1973 proved an auspicious beginning, winning a primetime screening on Kiwi television, and sales to Europe (he would return to the topic in 1988, producing and researching Nuklia Fri Pasifik, which examined the role played by the South Pacific in the nuclear arms race.) In 2008, Barry unveiled arguably his most high profile documentary to date. While researching the techniques used by the National Party during the 2005 election campaign, he discovered investigative author Nicky Hager was working on similar material, for his book The Hollow Men. The two then col-laborated on a film of the same title.

Bhim, Mosmi: Stifled aspirations—Fiji’s 2014 elections under restrictive lawsEight years after the 5 December 2006 coup, Fiji is having general elections on 17 September 2014 under repressive laws curtailing Freedom of Expression and the media, government accountability and the judiciary. A notable number of candi-dates aspire for parliamentary seats under the imposed 2013 Constitution and an Electoral Decree released a few months prior to elections. In an atmosphere of lav-ish campaign advertisements on billboards, public transport vehicles and the daily media by the coup-installed Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama’s political party

Hot Air


Fiji First, political parties struggle to have their voice heard amidst the limita-tions. Two daily media companies—the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation and the Fiji Sun—display blatant bias towards the Fiji First party by providing them excessive and preferential coverage and portraying other parties in a negative light; other media organisations attempt to give a fairer coverage. As the debate heats up amidst harsh crackdowns by police on ‘trouble-makers’ vandalising Fiji First posters, it remains to be seen if the elections will be ‘free and fair’. This paper, through analysis of media materials, campaigning, polling and results calculations, will find out if citizens were able to participate freely and fully in the 2014 ‘democratic’ elections.

Mosmi Bhim has been a lecturer in ethics and governance at the Fiji National University since 2011. In the aftermath of the 2006 coup in Fiji, she worked as a communications and advocacy officer at the civil society organisation Citizens’ Constitutional Forum (CCF) where she actively advocated for human rights, good governance and return to parliamentary democracy. She has an MA in Governance from the University of the South Pacific (USP) and a BA in Journalism and History/Politics from USP. She has research interests in freedom of expression, media freedom and government accountability, human rights and authoritarian regimes.

Callaghan, Ruth: Classroom curation—using storify.com<http://storify.com/> as a participatory journalism teaching toolThe use of the news curation tool storify.com<http://storify.com/> as a publica-tion platform for journalism and news has accelerated. The service is now used by diverse mainstream news publishers, (including ABC news, the Times, New York Post and Washington Post), news wire services (Associated Press, Agence France-Presse), and news generators (the Whitehouse, United Nations and World Bank, to name a few) to collect and publish ‘social stories’ comprising social media content and framing statements. Within the classroom, storify has been recognised as having value in enabling students to produce with speed and ease news stories based on social content, but likewise challenges them to assess content, consider agendas and frames, and develop storytelling skills (Mihialdis & Cohen, 2013). Indeed, the tool can reposition journalists (or journalism stu-dents) in the traditional gatekeeper role (Bakker, 2014) of a wire desk editor, requiring educators to revisit the need for skill development in the selection and verification of content. This paper examines the use of storify.com<http://


storify.com/> in a journalism class-based newsroom as a tool to curate breaking news, including the search for the MH370, and lessons learned about teaching skills in content selection and verification.

Ruth Callaghan is a journalist, media strategist and journalism educator based at Edith Cowan University in Perth. An award-winning writer, she has spent two decades as a working and freelance reporter with newspapers and magazines, and works with corporates, educators and government to improve awareness of how the media operates. She has lectured in journalism, broadcasting and public relations for almost 10 years and specialises in the teaching of new and digital media practices, media law and ethics, entrepreneurial journalism and feature writing. Chesterfield, Nick: Re-framing the guerrillas in the mist, avoiding a media abyss: Overcoming media mythmaking, malignancies, and dangerous conduct in West Papua reportageWith the recent Presidential election of Joko Widowi, a populist wayang puppet mastered by deeply undemocratic military forces in Indonesia, many observers of the ongoing and brutal Indonesian colonisation of West Papua are expressing a long held, but erroneous hope that this will signal a change and usher in a new transparency in the universally-condemned ban on Foreign journalists entering West Papua. This paper examines the current state of media freedom in Papua, historical perspectives and changes in media freedom for both clandestine and independent media capabilities, and safety for qualified and citizen journalists. It argues that far from opening up the occupied territory to international scrutiny, the security forces are in fact tightening their grip on freedom of expression and the ability for independent media to operate freely in West Papua—and as a result calls on international journalists to do more. The arrest in August of two French journalists, the unprecedented harassment of sources and contacts, attempted extradition and security threats to the author on espionage charges, highlight the reality of the alleged opening of Papua’s media environment. With only two for-eign journalist permits issued to visit to West Papua in two years, West Papua Media uses its position as the only credible independent media network organisa-tion to ‘fix’ clandestine reportage missions inside West Papua. Journalistic ethics and failures of accessing Papua according to the ‘legal’ official channels, versus the successes of working underground with clandestine methods, ‘illegal entry’, and secure digital and physical Safe Witness Broadcasting techniques are examined.


Nick Chesterfield is a human rights journalist and Safe Witness Journalism trainer who co-founded the clandestine West Papua Media network (partners to the Pacific Media Centre) network in 2007. A former human rights and refugee protection field worker, environmental, human security investigator and activist with 18 years of experience across indigenous Melanesia, Chesterfield is one the few non-Papuan journalists dedicated to breaking the media blackout of West Papua despite lack of funding. He is still currently facing Indonesian espionage and subversion charges for journalist activities in West Papua, connected to the arrest of French journalists in August 2014, and ongoing smuggling of international journalists into West Papua.

Craddock, Pat: University journalism casualties: A Fiji media freedom case studyThis paper is a case study analysis of an attack on academic and media free-dom at the Pacific’s regional university in the months in 2014 preceeding the first general election since the 2006 military coup. The University of the South Pacific in Suva employed expatriate lecturers Patrick Craddock of New Zea-land and Matthew Thompson of Australia to teach journalism during the first Semester of 2014. By the end of the term both lecturers were in conflict with both the university and the military government. It began with a media release (MR) from Craddock and Thompson criticising the army for defending their use of torture on civilians. A second story in the MR said that two respected sen-ior Fiji journalists had been denied accreditation at a meeting held in Nadi. Both journalists asked for a clarification for this action by the military government. Neither received an explanation. Radio, TV and the Fijian national newspapers reported this MR as front-page news. The USP senior administration took of-fence and issued a statement querying the accuracy and propriety of the MR, saying that an internal investigation would take place and that the USP would consider appropriate action against the two academics. Craddock and Thomp-son were interviewed by the Acting Vice-Chancellor who said there has been an internal complaint about the MR but declined to name the complainant. Both lecturers were sent a letter saying that they had to sign a statement acknowled- ging that they would obey the code of behavior expected of USP staff. The letter implied that the MR was inaccurate and the action of the two journalists could affect work permits for future staff. Craddock and Thompson denied any inac-curacy in their MR and refused to sign the letters. Both staff left the university and declined to work there under a self-censorship regime.


Pat Craddock began his radio career with Radio New Zealand and worked as a producer for Morning Report, the documentary programme Insight and Radio New Zealand International. He was then appointed as the first manager for the newly formed Radio New Zealand Continuing Education Unit. The skills of journalism and media education then merged and he became a media trainer in Papua New Guinea, Fiji Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tonga, Kenya and Mozambique. He has worked for the University of the South Pacific (USP) on four different occasions over a time frame of 20 years that covered the Speight coup of 2000 and the Bainima-rama coup of 2006. His last appointment at USP was from March to July of this year. Craddock is on the editorial board of Pacific Journalism Review.

Cullen, Trevor: Health reporting in the Pacific: New challenges ahead.Health is a topic that affects everyone, either through their own personal expe-riences or those of their family, friends or work colleagues. Indeed, people are more interested in what hits closest to home, and they want information that is accurate and they can trust. Yet, for a long time, reporting health consisted largely of statistics on the number of deaths and cases of disease, or reporting on epidemiological data that affect people we do not know. While this is important for health officials, it is of little interest to audiences who demand information that is useful to their daily lives. Research has shown that if effectively used, the media can lessen fear and stigma which are the biggest obstacles to seeking information and treatment about diseases. But the reality is that with the 24/7 news cycle, journalists are more reactive than proactive in terms of news gather-ing, and often rely on receiving news and information in pre-packaged media releases or videos. Besides, journalists are seldom experts in the field they report on and depend on people and experts to share their stories. Yet, the media have a significant role to play by informing the public and holding governments to account. An added problem that journalists in many Pacific countries face is that they rely heavily on a diet of press releases, workshop invitations and event launches to drive their health news. In an article on health journalism in the Pacific, Gooch and Williams-Lahari (2008) argue that health is much more than drugs and doctors, and they list a series of factors that influence health such as gender inequality, good governance, human rights legislation, the changing role of culture, traditional taboos around sexuality, the influence of faith-based organisations, migration and national development. This perspective on health provides a new and extensive list of news and feature stories for print, online and


broadcast journalists. But this wider focus on the social determinants of health is not what drives health journalism in many Pacific countries.

Dr Trevor Cullen is associate professor of journalism and coordinates the journal-ism programme at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. His doc-toral thesis focused on press coverage of HIV/AIDS and he is the author of several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, workshops and conference papers on the topic. As the leading specialist in his field, he has been awarded several major research grants in Australia and internationally. In recent years, he has conducted courses and lectures in China. Dr Cullen is on the editorial board of Pacific Journalism Review.

Davies, Kayt: The logging of ‘cloud forest’on the island of Kolombangara: An investigative case studyThis paper presents a case study of the process of creating a piece of journalism about an indigenous-run legal bid to challenge potentially corrupt government approvals, in order to save a rare cloud-forest in the Solomon Islands. In addi-tion to documenting the process of researching and writing a story for an inter-national audience about an issue that is so slow moving that it does not conform with the usual criteria for gaining media attention, the paper will discuss the process of creating an exegesis about the story. Pacific Journalism Review’s Front-line section is pioneering the research format that comprises pieces of journalism accompanied by exegeses. This format has been discussed in several papers and presentations over recent years and yet there is still a relatively low level of use of this methodology among journalism scholars, suggesting that the exegesis writing process is not well understood. This paper builds on the work of Nash (2014) and Bacon (2012) and points to how the guidelines they proscribed were applied in this case. Specific points this exegesis covers include a discussion about seeking impartiality when using sources known through family and social networks and the challenges of reporting complex legal issues and balancing technical accuracy with the need for succinct writing. The case study article about the Kolombangara Cloud Forest has been accepted for publication by the UK-based, globally-distributed publication New Internationalist. The article and exegesis will be submitted to PJR’s Frontline section later this year.

Dr Kayt Davies is a senior lecturer in journalism at Edith Cowan University. Initially trained as a cadet journalist in business news, she has worked for The West


Australian, Visnews (London), and edited community newspapers, magazines and online news services. She has a BA (Psych) Honours, an MPhil in English and Com-parative Literature and her PhD was an ethnographic study of women’s magazine editors. She has been awarded two Vice-Chancellor’s citations for teaching and an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation. She is the founding editor of Research Journalism, an academic journal dedicated to enabling journalism schol-ars to practise journalism.

GUEST SPEAKER Dreaver, Barbara: TVNZ Pacific affairs correspondentAs Pacific correspondent for ONE News, Barbara Dreaver’s coverage of stories has included Fiji’s cursed “can-nibal village” and the sinking islands of Tuvalu. She has broken many stories including New Zealand businessman Mark Lyon’s activities in the Cook Is-lands and the discovery of live chemical weapons lying at the side of the road in the Solomon Islands. As well as in-ternational stories Barbara has also concentrated on issues facing Pacific Islanders living in New Zealand. She has exposed a scam targeting Pacific Islands pensioners and other concerns facing the community. Barbara says she is passionate about her job because of her cultural heritage. She was born and brought up in her mother’s home country of Kiribati and also spent eight years working in the Cook Islands. After graduating from Auckland University with a BA, Barbara began her career in journalism in 1990 as a reporter with the Rarotonga-based Cook Islands News. From there she co-owned and edited a weekly newspaper Cook Islands Press that won a regional Freedom of the Press award. She also worked for international news organisations such as AFP and Radio New Zealand International.

Drugunalevu, Eliki and Irene Manueli: Media freedom in Fiji: Journal-ism challenges facing an independent, campus-based, student newspaper This paper examines how the University of the South Pacific (USP) journalism training newspaper, Wansolwara, has skirted around media censorship in Fiji to


report on some major national issues as part of student learning. This includes having to contend with punitive legislation such as the Public Emergency Regu-lations (PER) and later the Media Industry Development Decree 2010. When PER was replaced by the Media Decree, no significant change was witnessed in Fiji’s mainstream journalism. Restraint was exercised by both the national daily newspapers, Fiji Sun and The Fiji Times, especially related to criticism of gov-ernment policies.Wansolwara fell somewhat under the radar, possibly because it was a journalism training publication with limited circulation at the time. In spite of claims by a former USP Vice-Chancellor that journalism students should only practise ‘simulated’ journalism,Wansolwara, which has won several Journalism Education Association (JEA) awards in its 16-year existence, has always considered itself as a serious newspaper tackling major national and re-gional issues to prepare students for life as a journalist. It was awarded the Dr Charles Stuart Best Publication award for coverage of the 2000 George Spei-ght attempted coup, underlining that students were practising real rather than simulated journalism (Robie, 2010). In the May 2014 issue, under student edi-tor Tevita Vuibau, Wansolwara focused on media freedom and the impending 2014 elections, with some in the mainstream media accused of being forced into producing ‘churnalism’ by strict legislation. Vuibau works at the Fiji Times, but found space in Wansolwara to truly express himself as a journalist. This illustrates the importance of an independent campus-based newspaper unen-cumbered by commercial and other forms of pressure emanating from owners, advertisers and the State. This paper will draw from in-depth interviews with the student editors and other stakeholders, and document research of past issues of Wansolwara.

Eliki Drugunalevu and Irene Manueli are journalism assistant lecturers in the Pacific Regional Journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific and supervisors of the award-winning student newspaper Wansolwara.

Duffield, Lee: Twenty Years of Pacific Journalism Review

The Pacific Journalism Review has consistently, at a good standard, honoured its found-ing goal from 1994: to be a credible peer-reviewed journal in the Asia-Pacific region, probing new developments in journalism and media, and supporting journalism ed-ucation. Universalistic, it considers new media and social movements; ‘regional’, it re-spects and follows vernacular media, concerned for human freedoms and sustainable


development. This article asks how this was achieved; for its method, to read through the archive, noting the authorship, sub-ject matter and themes. It concludes that one first answer is the strong demand for this forum; hundreds, whether academ-ics, journalists or others, have contributed. Secondly has been the dedication of its one principal editor, Professor David Robie, always providing resources—at Port Moresby, Suva, now Auckland—and a con-sistent editorial stance.Too eclectic to be partisan, it has been vigilant nevertheless over rights, e.g. through coups d’etat in Fiji. Watching the Pacific through a media lens, it follows a ‘Pacific way’, handling hard infor-mation through understanding and consensus. It has 237 subscriptions indexed to seven databases. Open source, it receives more than 1000 site visits weekly. With ‘clientele’ mostly in Australia, New Zealand and ‘Oceania’, a wider follow-ing includes 12.5 percent online in Europe. From 1994 to 2012, 727 articles and reviews were published, expanding to more than 24 scholarly articles a year.

Dr Lee Duffield is a senior lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, where he is postgraduate journalism coordinator and is engaged in post-graduate teaching, supervision and assessment. He runs an international journalism programme in both European Union countries and the Pacific. This year he took a team of students to New Caledonia, Vanuatu and the Pacific Media Centre in New Zealand on a Pacific Affairs reporting mission. He is on the editorial board of Pacific Journalism Review and is a research associate of the PMC.

Elers, Phoebe: Online news representations of New Zealand e-health strategiesIn the modern day, there is a widespread belief that e-health (electronic health) will play a vital role in reshaping health systems and contribute to providing safer, higher quality healthcare, in an environment facing increasing pressures (Rinal-di, 2014). The term ‘e-health’ encapsulates the transfer of health resources and


healthcare by electronic means (World Health Organization, 2014), and it is promoted with sediments of ‘self-management’ and ‘patient-centric’ healthcare (Ministry of Health, 2013). This year the Ministry of Health and the IT Health Board have featured in a number of news articles endorsing e-health innovations and encouraging its uptake among patients and health providers (see: IT Health Board, 2014). However, the concept of self-management in healthcare has been criticised as disguising health resource rationing and emphasising the citizen’s responsibility to maintain their health, while absolving liability from the state (Bury, 2008; Savard, 2013). Furthermore, the promotion of e-health commodi-ties may be of particular benefit for commercial interests, and despite significant investments in the last decade, progress in integrating e-health systems has hin-dered (Gauld, 2004). This has contributed to a growing debate about whether e-health strategies can achieve its speculated benefits (OECD, 2010). This study applies qualitative content analysis toa series of online news articles concerning government commissionede-health strategies to undercover the values and as-sumptions underpinning these initiatives. The findings are significant in con-sidering the national development of e-health; which is of consequence to the government, healthcare providers and citizens of New Zealand.

Phoebe Elers is a PhD candidate in the School of Communication Studies at the Auckland University of Technology. She obtained a masters degree in health man-agement from Queensland University of Technology with a specific focus on health communication. Her doctoral research explores the national implementation of the patient portal services in New Zealand, which is an online platform that facilitates digital communication between patients and their healthcare providers. She is a recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Doctoral Scholarship.

Elers, Steve: Conducting research with Māori: Experiences, reflections and lessons from a Communication Studies PhDThis paper describes the experiences of researching among Māori for a doctoral thesis concerning media depictions of Māori, namely government-driven public informa-tion campaigns targeted at Māori. The author conducted focus groups with 63 Māori participants and interviews with five Māori leaders in order to gain perspectives of the constructed identities of Māori that are portrayed in public information television advertisements. The philosophical stance was influenced by critical theory and post-colonial criticism but an overarching kaupapa Māori approach to research was taken.


The crux of this paper is a self-reflective cognitive examination of the experiences gained through research design, implementation and analysis. This includes the rationale for choosing the research topic, the initial design of a kaupapa Māori approach, establishing contact and interactions with Māori organisations, through to the intricacies of actual research among Māori communities such as the ethical issues and interactions with one’s own iwi and hapū. The importance of being a Māori researcher, as opposed to being a researcher who happens to be Māori, is also dis-cussed as positioning of the self in relation to indigenous research is pertinent in order to develop theory and knowledge that benefits Māori rather than contrib-uting only to the western academy. Being situated within a particular embodied standpoint is explored in relation to how that affects the objectivity and validity of research among Māori. This paper may be useful for researchers who are contem-plating qualitative research with Māori participants and may contribute to the grow-ing corpus of literature pertaining to kaupapa Māori approach.

Steve Elers is a PhD candidate and lecturer in the School of Communication Stud-ies at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in New Zealand. His masters degree was in public relations and he is a former police officer. His doctoral research is a qualitative study of Māori perspectives of the constructed identities of Māori that are portrayed in public information advertisements on television. He is a recipient of a Vice-Chancellor’s Doctoral Scholarship and the Waikato-Tainui Doctoral Scholarship.

Ellmers, Steve: A tale of two statues: Contemporary conflict reporting constraints and the Battle of BaghdadAlthough television conflict reporting has usually been limited by risks to jour-nalists’ safety, the death throes of Baathist Iraq in April 2003 provided view-ers with a unique opportunity to vicariously witness the fall of a large modern city. Yet if the iconic moment of the Second Gulf War came when Saddam Hus-sein’s statue in Firdos Square was toppled, then it was at the expense of another image event which unfolded earlier a short distance away. Because the U.S. military’s violent destruction of the equestrian statue close to the ‘Hands of Victory’ monument better encapsulates the conflict than the sterile bloodless ‘cakewalk’ description it’s usually labelled with. This article shows how the tale of these two statues is also in some ways the tale of two Fox News correspondents; and how an alienation from military service conditions and methods can leave report-ers and their audiences with no sense of what the participants on their screens


endured in order to reach Baghdad; or what they had also inflicted upon others. In retrospect, the circumstances which allowed one Fox reporter to provide the world with what might have been its first taste of live, unedited combat footage seem more like an accidental success than the result of systemic best practices. Especially when this network and even its most credible host remain commit-ted to ensuring a particular partisan perspective dominates all their broadcasts.

Steve Ellmers is fascinated by conflict reporting and how military affairs are framed. He is currently a part-time Lecturer with UNITEC’s Department of Communica-tion Studies.

CARTOONIST: Evans, Malcolm: Challenges for political cartooningAlways happiest with a pencil in his hand, Malcolm Evans has been a profes sional cartoonist since the 1960s. Evans first cartooned for the Bay of Plenty Times in his hometown of Tauranga. Then, after cartooning for the Express and Star in England, he joined The New Zealand Herald in 1970. Ev-ans succeeded Sir Gordon Minhinnick in 1976 and then left the Herald in 1978 but continued to supply his popular Edna cartoons to New Zealand's Rural News. Evans returned to full time cartoon ing with The New Zealand Herald in 1996 and was judged NZ cartoonist of the year in 1999 and again in 2003, the same year the Herald fired him for refusing to stop drawing anti-Zionist/Israeli car-toons. Since then he has supplied the Fairfax papers with daily cartoons and has also published two editions of a collection of political cartoons drawn from all of New Zealand's cartoonists. Evans has also been the lead cartoonist for Pacific Journalism Review since it began publishing in New Zealand.

Fernandez, Joseph:The confidential sources and shield law highwire: View from the journalist’s perchThe formal consideration of protection for Australian journalists’ confidential sources began at least two decades ago. Australian journalists have since fought for effective source protection against a backdrop of the sweeping powers of


the courts to demand disclosure, and the oppressive powers of investigating au-thorities and inquiry bodies. Journalists have sought stronger source protection (shield law) through concerted campaigns, including one that attracted more than 38,000 signatures to a petition; and by tending to prefer penalty for contempt of court to source disclosure. Is the current shield law regime working? Accord-ing to the peak journalists’ organisation, the Media Alliance, Australia’s recent record in this area ‘clearly demonstrate Australia’s patchy and disparate shields fail to do their job’. Recent court experiences for journalists exposed particular shield law inadequacies. Other inadequacies include the absence of definitive statutory protection in some jurisdictions; and the lack of uniform shield law across the jurisdictions where such law is available. While journalists demand effective shield law, a nagging question remains—what scope should such a law have? Should the protection be ‘absolute’? Should it be qualified? Are journal-ists unanimous on their preference? Are journalists sufficiently aware of how shield law works? How do they negotiate work involving confidential sources? These and related questions are examined. This study will report on insights gained from an online survey and follow-up one-on-one interviews with jour-nalists, on their experiences in working with confidential sources. The study’s objectives are to: (a) to better understand how Australian journalists operate when it involves obtaining information for publication through undertakings of confidentiality to their sources; (b) to better understand how legal and ethi-cal rules and other considerations impact on journalists’ work when it involves reliance on confidential sources; and (c) to apply the understanding gained from this study towards efforts, including law reform efforts, aimed at addressing the issues identified.

Dr Joseph M. Fernandez is Associate Professor and head of Curtin University’s journalism department. His main teaching area is media law and he is the author of a peer-reviewed book—Media Law in Australia: Principles, Pitfalls and Potentials(2013). He was chief editor of a Malaysian daily newspaper for 14 years and has been active in the Australian shield law area for more than a decade. His research focuses on the areas in which the law and journalism intersect. He graduated from Australian universities with a BA majoring in journalism and three law degrees— LLB, LLM and PhD in defamation law. His PhD thesis proposed a loosening of the defence of truth for media defendants in defined circumstances.


Forbes, Amy: Marcos and censorship: Fairy tales of the martial law yearsWhen then Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972, press freedom became the first casualty. Filipinos woke up to silence and fear as television and radio stations were raided and then padlocked. News-paper printing presses ground to a halt as journalists, editors, publishers and other so-called ‘enemies of the state’ were ‘invited’ for questioning in what be-came known as the ABC of military camps—Aguinaldo, Bonifacio and Camp Crame. Marcos was specially fearful of the press at the time and ordered the ar-rest of journalists who were charged with conspiring with the ‘Left’. A handful of female journalists, particularly from the Daily Bulletin, among them Arlene Babst, Ninez Cacho Olivares, Domini Torrevillas, and Melinda de Jesus, ap-peared to get away with writing about Marcos and the human rights violations committed by his regime in the name of ‘saving the republic.’ In this paper, I interview Ninez Cacho-Olivares who recounts how she used humour and fairy tales in her popular column for the Daily Bulletin (formerly Manila Bulletin) to criticise Marcos, his wife, Imelda, their cronies and even the very military who would occasionally ‘invite’ her for questioning if Marcos found her columns overstepping the false freedom of the press he claimed to have restored following pressure from the US government in the 1980s. Using examples of her writing at the time, I show how effective Olivares’ writing was in animating discussions in cafés and social gatherings using her unique brand of humour and biting sarcasm directed against the dictator. She explains an unwritten code between. Marcos and the female journalists of her time that she says is still observed by succeeding Philippine presidents as she continues her more than 50 years of oppositional political journalism in a country that once boasted of being the ‘freest in Asia’.

Dr Amy Forbes is a senior lecturer in journalism and communication at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. She is also a journalist who has worked across television, print and online platforms. She was co-publisher and columnist of the Philippines’ first daily online newspaper, Balitang Kababayan, in 1995 while an academic at De La Salle University Manila where she was associate professor in communication. She received a 2014 Office for Learning and Teaching award for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning for leadership and excellence in developing and delivering a pioneering WIL-based curriculum in Multimedia Journalism at JCU.


Goldson, Annie: Caught in the web: Issues from the Dotcom caseThis presentation will explore the methodological design of a trans-media pro-ject currently underway. The project combines two related outputs—a feature documentary and an online journal—both hosted on a Creative Commons site. The project as a whole uses tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, or more accurately, issues arising from the ‘Dotcom case’ as its starting point. The battle between Dotcom and the US Government and entertainment industry—being fought in New Zealand—is one that goes to the heart of ownership, privacy, and ‘pira-cy’ in the digital age, also raising issues about New Zealand’s independence and sovereignty. The first of the two outputs will be a major feature documentary, which, given the colourful character at its centre, should attract a large popular audience. Whereas the film will engage with the underlying issues, the second output, a peer-reviewed edited collection written by journalists and scholars who provide commentary within the film, will offer a more in-depth analysis. The choice to register it through a Creative Commons licence gives the pro-ject a methodological elegance, given the content at its heart. Finally, having a live ‘hub’ during the process of production will allow us to present works-in-progress, encourage dialogue, and actively promote the project, and the debate, worldwide.

Professor Annie Goldson is a documentary film-maker whose films have won over 60 awards at international film festivals, have opened theatrically in the US, Australia and New Zealand and sold to major broadcasters worldwide. Her films include Punitive Damage, Georgie Girl, Sheilas: 28 Years On, Pacific Solution, Elgar’s Enigma, An Island Calling, Brother Number One and He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan. Annie also regularly publishes academic articles and book chapters in a range of scholarly collections and journals. She holds an ONZM for services to film and received her PhD at the University of Auckland where she currently teaches.

Gooch, Nicole: Investigating violent environmental protests in New Caledonia’s south against the Vale nickel refinery, using a political ecology frameworkThis paper presents a case study of the motivations driving the latest wave of vio-lent protests against a nickel refinery in the south of New Caledonia, and how political ecology, as a conceptual framework, can be used hand in hand with


journalism to provide in-depth reporting on environmental conflicts, which will result in the truth claims that define journalism as research (Nash 2013, 2014). Earlier this year the government of New Caledonia ordered Brazilian nickel mining company Vale to shut down its US$6 billion nickel facility at Goro, after an estimated 100,000 litres of acid-tainted effluent ended up in a creek, killing thousands of fish (Jamasmie). The mine and its refinery have been plagued by a string of similar incidents since construction begun a little over ten years ago, each time raising the ire of indigenous and environmental rights’ protesters (Gooch, 2012). However, many of the protesters also work at the mine, which serves to highlight the complexity of the issues at stake. The mine is indeed deeply embedded in a specific political, economic, social and cul-tural context, including decolonisation and questions over legitimacy of power (Horowitz, 2009; van Vuuren, 2008). While political ecology helps to decipher the ‘social forms of access and control over resources’ (Peet & Watts, 2004), journalism as research ‘requires a conceptual framework specific to the field of empirical focus, and that can only be supplied from the relevant field and associ-ated discipline(s)’ (Nash, 2014). Investigating an environmental conflict such as this one is therefore a good example of how a political ecology framework can help to make better sense of the processes and motivations at play and hence help to produce journalism that provides better answers to the questions of ‘how’ and ‘why’ identified by James Carey (1996) as frequently left unanswered by our profession.

Nicole Gooch is a freelance journalist from New Caledonia who covers environmental, maritime and health issues. She previously worked in public health at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC). She is also an associate of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS and is a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review.

Hoeta, Ayla: Social media supports rangatahi online whānau identity Social media in adolescent life today is a new historical phenomenon. During the last decade social media became a significant part of daily life for a majority of adolescents. This paper explores a lineage of research to provide understand-ing of how Māori adolescents (rangatahi) are influenced by this phenomenon. Literature revealed significant socioeconomic gaps between Māori and non-Māori adolescents in New Zealand which contributed to a history of inferior rangatahi digital and educational development. Today however, rangatahi social media use


has increased significantly, showing great possibilities by which rangatahi online communities have appropriated social media technology to serve cultural, edu-cational and social visions. This paper will discuss the key finding, rangatahi on-line whānau identity. The inclusion of whānau in education has proven to be an effective method for rangatahi success in education. Focusing on this method, this study investigates how whānau is being utilised for/by rangatahi in the con-text of social media. Fifteen discourses from three different rangatahi Facebook communities were analysed. The overarching methodology used in this study is kaupapa Māori (practices based on Māori customs and values) and the additional method used during data collection is content analysis. Content analysis was used quantitatively to draw samples of discourses, and used qualitatively to analyse texts. Kaupapa Māori remained the guiding paradigm throughout the entire study. Māori customs and values such as tapu (restriction and respect), koha (reciprocity and acknowledgement) and aroha (compassion and empathy) are some examples of the underlying kaupapa Māori values exercised throughout this research. This paper concludes with in-depth knowledge of social media and its usefulness for rangatahi today.

Ayla Hoeta is an Honour’s degree student in the School of Communication Studies at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. She has recently com-pleted her dissertation which is a qualitative study of social media’s contribution to rangatahi (Māori youth) formation of Māori identity. She is a recipient of the Graduate Teaching Assistant Scholarship, Waikato-Tainui Postgraduate Scholar-ship and is also a part of the Hāpai programme, which offers additional part-time employment, career pathway support and professional development opportunities to Māori postgraduate students.

Leadbeater, Maire: Conflict in West Papua: The contrast between historic and contemporary media coverage in New Zealand Many New Zealanders, even in politically aware circles have a limited under-standing of West Papua and frequently confuse the Indonesian-controlled terri-tory with its neighbour, Papua New Guinea. This reflects the very limited main-stream media coverage of the territory and of the ongoing conflict that is taking place there. However, in 1962 and again in 1969 the New Zealand media gave considerable attention to the crises that enveloped West Papua and determined its subsequent destiny. The territory’s Pacific location was often highlighted and


the statements of West Papuan leaders were reported. 1962 saw escalating In-donesian military intervention in the territory and subsequently the signing of the controversial US-brokered New York Agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesia. In 1969, Indonesia conducted an ‘Act of Free Choice’ which was widely seen by external observers as a fraudulent act of self-determination. This paper will give examples of this historic coverage and consider what might be done to bring about change and to bring West Papua back into the frame as a Pacific neighbour.

Maire Leadbeater was active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and in the mass peace movement of the 1980s that successfully advocated for a Nuclear Free New Zealand. She has also been involved in a number of human rights and solidar-ity NGOs and is currently active in West Papua Action Auckland. Her research focus at present is about New Zealand’s foreign policy concerning West Papua from 1949 to the present. Maire is a regular contributor to newspapers and journals on the topic of New Zealand’s foreign and human rights policies. Leadbeater is the author of Negligent Neighbour: New Zealand’s complicity in the invasion and occu-pation of Timor Leste (2006) and holds an Amnesty International New Zealand life-time award for her work in human rights.

DOCUMENTARY: Marbrook, Jim: Cap Bocage: When a Mountain Fell into the Sea (74min)

‘At Cap Bocage in New Caledonia in early January 2008, heavy rains washed toxic sludge from the hilltop nickel mines into Kanak customary fishing grounds below. Coastal village people testify that it’s the dramatic culmination of a slow and steady pollution that’s been going on for 30 years. Aucklander Jim Marbrook’s documen-tary follows independence activist Florent Eurisouké as he and the environmental organisation Mèè Rhaari take on the mining company, Ballande. Refusing any compromise, Mèè Rhaari demands repair and restitution. It’s a drawn out struggle, punctuated with judicial interventions and court-appointed environmental reports. Every delay favours Ballande as time and tide gradually disperse the spill into the ocean; meanwhile, Mèè Rhaari can act only with the endorsement of the tradition-al council leaders. Divisions grow between Eurisouké and the ‘realists’ among the elders. Their pragmatic accommodation to life with Ballande is openly admitted,


but the details are, significantly, kept off camera. The charismatic Eurisouké constitutes a dynamic force field in Marbrook’s telling picture of a French Pacific territory deeply divided on the issue of independence.’—Bill Gosden’s NZ International Film Festival Notes. This film was the first creative project assisted by the Pacific Media Centre when it was established in 2007. More substantial grants followed from Crea-tive New Zealand and NZ Film.

Director Jim Marbrook is best known for his documentary work, which has screened on television and at the NZ round of film festivals. Auckland born and bred, Mar-brook began making and studying films in the 90s, while at Concordia University in Montreal. His first short after returning home, dark drama Jumbo, debuted at the NZ round of film festivals in 1998. It also played in a number of international festivals. Since 2007 he has lectured in Television and Screen at Auckland University of Technology, where his research topics include health and the disabled. Around 2001, Marbrook met Gisborne speed chess maestro Genesis Potini, who was living with a bipolar disorder. Marbrook’s film Dark Horse about Potini won Best Feature at the 2005 DOCNZ International Documentary Festival. Potini’s life would later inspire the 2014 Cliff Curtis feature The Dark Horse, which Marbrook co-produced, and was screened at the NZ International Film Festival this year, as was Cap Bocage.

DAY 2 MORNING KEYNOTE: Morris, Ricardo: Friday Keynote AddressFiji journalist and publisher Ricardo Morris is fight-ing two battles. As journalist, editor and publisher of Repúblika Magazine in Fiji, he works tirelessly to pub-lish and promote his publication. And as president of the Fijian Media Association, he works to promote freedom and liberties in a media landscape where military cen-sorship prevailed until 2012. View the profile of Morris

Cap Bocage


made by a Pacific Media Centre student at the time of the Fiji general election in September: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgO2O7lFL4E

Keynote speaker Ricardo Morris is sponsored for the New Zealand trip to the conference by AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies.

Nash, Chris: ‘Atolls in the ocean/ canaries in the mine: Australian journalism about the impact of climate change in the Pacific.’This paper examines in close detail the journalism over the period 2009 to 2011 by two leading Australian journalists about the impact of climate change in the Pacific, and broadly contextualises it in the subsequent coverage since that time to the present. The global political context was the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2009 COP15 Conference in Copenhagen at which the Association of Small Island States under the leadership at the time of Tuvalu achieved a very high profile for the looming plight of Pacific island states. The two journalists whose work is examined were the two most prolific over the period: Adam Morton, then Environmental Editor for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, and Rowan Callick, then Asia-Pacific editor for The Australian national broadsheet. The two took diametrically opposed positions on the threat posed by climate change to low-lying island states and littoral areas. The paper deploys a theoretical frame-work drawing on the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu and the spatio-temporality theory of David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre to produce a highly textured analy-sis, which it suggests might offer a model for the production of reflexive and rigorous journalism on other topics more broadly.

Dr Chris Nash is Professor of Journalism at Monash University. He has a profes-sional award-winning background in radio and television current affairs, and film and web documentary. His current research interests focus on journalism as a scholarly research methodology, journalism and the environment and journalism and aesthetics. He is on the editorial board of Pacific Journalism Review and has been a guest editor.

DAY 1 MORNING KEYNOTE: Oreña-Drilon, Ces: Impunity in the Philippines: Losing the Maguindanao massacre case?


This keynote talk will sound the alarm about developments in the trial of the Maguindanao massacre in the Southern Philippines in 2009 that could lead to a potential loss by the prosecution in this landmark case. Thirty four journalists were murdered by a local warlord’s militia is the worst ever death toll of news people in a single attack. The case also has implications for political journalism in the Asia-Pacific region. Ces Oreña-Drilon says: ‘A series of stories I did on allegations of bribery of government prosecutors by the accused has triggered an investigation by the National Bureau of Investigation. A corrup-tion complaint has been filed against the number two man in the Department of Justice and several prosecutors. Private prosecutors and state prosecutors no longer work in unison. Media in the last three court hearings, have been barred from entering the police camp. Because of these worrisome developments as we approach the sixth anniversary of the murders, I would like to appeal for international organisations to continue their monitoring of the case. We need international eyes to help us in the fight against a miscarriage of justice.’

Ces Oreña-Drilon is an award-winning Filipino broadcast and investigative jour-nalist. She graduated from the University of the Philippines with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication research and has presented news and current affairs for the ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation since 1989. After presenting the programme The Correspondents, since the 2000s she has been a co-anchor of the ABS-CBN flagship nightly news programmes Insider and Bandila. In 2008, she was abducted with two cameramen by al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants. She was held pris-oner in the Sulu jungle for nine days for ransom. She made a documentary about this experience called Kidnap. She has investigated and reported on many other high profile stories.

Guest speaker Ces Oreña-Drilon’s visit to New Zealand for the conference is sponsored by the Asia New Zealand Foundation. She was forced to return to Manila because of a family bereavement and was replaced by Del Abcede of the PMC who spoke about the Ampatuan/Maguindanao massacre.


Paul, Jessica: The dangerous meme: Exploring representations of Māori on FacebookRace relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand are somewhat complex and multifac-eted. Since colonisation, Māori have experienced some of the most negative social, political and economic outcomes in the country and have done so pro-gressively compared with their Pākehā counterparts (Bell, 2009; Durie, 2000; Humpage, 2006; Knox, 2004; Sibley, Hoverd & Liu, 2011). Explanations for social disparities between Māori and Pākehā in everyday discourse have evoked genetic or cultural characteristics of marginalised populations without recogni-tion given to the social, political and economic environments within which they arise (Borell at al., 2009, p. 30). Furthermore, there is a substantial body of work in media studies and social commentary which suggests Māori have been histor-ically and contemporarily misrepresented by the New Zealand media, and that these misrepresentations have had a significant effect on Māori wellbeing (Abel, 1997; Durie, 2003; Loto, Hodgetts, Chamberlain, Nikora, Karapu and Bar-netti, 2006; Nairn, 2006; Spoonley, 1990; Walker, 1990; Walker 2002). There are few studies to date which investigate Māori representation on the Internet, and none which focus specifically on Māori representations on social media. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore how Maori are represented on the social networking website Facebook. It will entail using Dryzek’s (1997) discourse analysis to examine a meme and its accompanying posts.

Jessica Paul is a masters degree student and lecturer in the School of Communica-tion Studies and with the Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Development at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in New Zealand. She recently completed an honours dissertation in communication studies, which was a qualitative study of Māori representation in the form of memes on Facebook. She is a recipient of the School of Communication Studies Postgraduate Scholarship and is also a part of the Hapai programme, which offers additional part-time employment, career pathway support and professional development opportunities to Māori postgraduate students.

Nur-Muhammad, Rizwangul and Evangelia Papoutsaki: Identity construction online: The use of Facebook by the Uyghur diasporaPrior to completing her postgraduate studies at Unitec Institute of Technology, Auck-land, Rizwangul Nur-Muhammad was involved in media news production as editor


and interpreter. She received her Master’s degree in International Communication at Department of Communication Studies, Unitec. Her research interests focus on social media, diaspora community development and identity construction. Her thesis has received international attention by diaspora, online social media and academic individuals and institutions signalling the merit of this research topic, signalling its high academic merit.

Papoutsaki, Evangelia, Sandra Kailahi and Usha Harris: Communicating climate change, disaster and crisis in the PacificThe Pacific Islands region has been on the focus of the climate change debate in the last few years. Several islands are already experiencing the impact of climate change on their small economies, cultures and fragile natural habitat. This has brought to attention the need to establish stronger communication mechanisms and install a range of media and communication platforms to provide access to early warning systems before a disaster and communication during disaster response. As the complexity of the media and communication environment of this region increases with the arrival of new technologies, questions remain about the appropriateness of ICTs for use during emergencies and disasters. There is also a greater need for understanding the possibilities of integrating ICTs like mobile phones into media and communication plans for disaster response tech-nologies like radio. This research presentation is based on the PACMAS State of Media and Communication Baseline research project (2013), undertaken across 14 Pacific Island nations and through a partnership between RMIT University (Australia), the University of Goroka (Papua New Guinea) and UNITEC (New Zealand). The paper focuses on aspects of climate change and emergency and crisis communication systems through the research’s key components (media policy, systems, capacity building and content). It gives some key findings that highlight the urgency of developing and sustaining systems of communication vital for these island nations.

Dr Evangelia Papoutsaki is an associate professor at the Department of Com-munication Studies, Unitec Institute of Technology, in Auckland, New Zealand, Research Associate at the Pacific Media Centre, AUT and editor-in-chief of Unitec ePress. Her professional background and academic interests are on development and communication for social change in developing countries. She has extensive experi-ence in the Pacific and involvement in major research projects, including the PAC-


MAS State of the Media report in 2013. She is a former reviews editor of Pacific Journalism Review.Sandra Kailahi is a researcher and media professional and has worked in main-stream and Pacific media in New Zealand and the Pacific. She was one of the main researchers on the PACMAS State of the Media report in 2013. She is working with RMIT in Melbourne on ‘The Gender of Money’ project looking at the way Tongan people living in New Zealand send money back to the kingdom. She is a published author and playwright and her research interests include media and communica-tion in New Zealand and the Pacific and participatory video methods. Sandra is a founder and current chair of the Pacific Islands Media Association in NZ.Dr Usha S. Harris is an academic in the Department of Media Music, Commu-nication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She has a keen interest in participatory approaches to communication planning. Dr Har-ris’ current research uses participatory media to better understand climate change impacts on culture and heritage in the Pacific. In 2012 she led a participatory media-training project for the Pacific Gender Climate Coalition whose facilitators work with climatic-vulnerable communities in the Cook Islands, Fiji, Guam, Kiri-bati, Niue, and Papua New Guinea.

Pearson, Mark: Suppression, sentences, surveillance, security and cynical spin: Is Australia an emerging Secret State?Australia’s reputation as a Western democracy valuing free expression has been eroded significantly by a raft of new laws and policies. The conservative Abbott government has placed its stamp on media law and free and open public commentary with several changes in both legislation and policy.In the course of its first year in office it has:

• blocked the media from information on the important human rights issue of the fate of asylum seekers

• initiated major budget cuts on the publicly funded ABC• used anti-terror laws to win a ‘super injunction’ on court proceed-

ings that might damage its international relations• proposed ramped up surveillance powers of national security agen-

cies and banning reporting of security operations• proposed increased jail terms for leaks about security matters• mooted a new gag on ‘incitement to terrorism’


• moved to stop not-for-profits advocating against government policy in their service agreements

• slated the Office of the Information Commissioner for abolition, promising tardy FOI appeals

• proposed the taxing of telcos to pay for its new surveillance measures, potentially a modern version of licensing the press.

The initiatives follow in the steps of the prior Labor government that had pro-posed a new media regulatory regime with potentially crippling obligations un-der the Privacy Act. Over the same period the judiciary has presided over the jailing of a journalist for breaching a suppression order, the conviction of a blogger for another breach, and several instances of journalists facing contempt charges over refusal to reveal their sources. This paper reviews these measures and questions whether, in a regional context, Australia still has the authority to mentor smaller neighbouring nations in free expression and transparency issues.

Dr Mark Pearson is professor of journalism and social media at Griffith Univer-sity, Queensland, Australia. He is co-author (with Mark Polden) of The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law (5th ed., Allen and Unwin, 2014) and is on the editorial board of Pacific Journalism Review. He is also the Australian representative of the Paris-based global media freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders.

Rahman, Khairiah: Dialogue and persuasion in the Islamic tradition: Implications for journalism The media today faces constant ethical challenges. The Rupert Murdoch News of the World debacle reinforces the idea of that the media is controlled and misman-aged, potentially damaging and serves a propagandist role. Western media that represents a dominant group has also been criticised for unbalanced, prejudicial and unfair reporting, particularly when presenting non-western or non-white cul-tural groups. Negative stereotyping and internal attributions often characterise such reporting, revealing more about the cultural bias of the reporter than the inaccurate cultural representation of those tarnished. The legacy of the fourth estate seems set to be put to rest with exposed manipulation of news stories through unethical conduct. According to the 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer report of 27 surveyed nations, ‘nearly 80 percent of countries reported trusting media less over the last year’ (Edelman Trust Barometer, 2014). In a fast-paced,


fast-changing world post 9/11, Western media have also been accused of mis-representing Islam and Muslims through biased reporting and misinformation. Muslims are often depicted as a homogenous group prone to acts of terrorism. With globalisation and rising interests in the Arab world, media stories and sources will continue to be cited from a largely Muslim population. In addition, the world’s Muslim population of 1.6 billion people in 2010 is projected to increase by 35 percent in the next 20 years (DeSilver, 2013), making Muslims a significant global consumer of the media. However, it would not be surprising to learn that Muslims worldwide are cautious, if not resentful, of Western media that create Islamaphobia—a culture of fear of Islam and Muslims. There needs to be more discussion on intercultural expectations of ethical communication if journalists and media outlets are serious about building trust and upholding ethical standards in reporting. This paper explores dialogic and persuasive communication in the Islamic tradition and discusses their similarities and differences with the West-ern perspective, offering an insight into this untapped area. This paper analyses some critical reviews of ethical communication practice by religious scholars based on the Quran (Book of God) and Hadith (recorded teachings of the prophet). The findings will prove useful for journalists working in Muslim environments.

Rajkhowa, Arjun: Popular politics and divergent claims of national unity In the contemporary context, nationalism and national identity in Western societies are highly contested conceptions. Both academia and the public sphere are characterised by intersecting and divergent claims of national identity. Com-peting notions of authenticity and ‘belonging’ pervade discussions of national identity in the media and in political spheres. In many quarters, nationalism has been assailed as an anachronistic historical phenomemon. This is counter-vailed by the continuing insertion of nationalistic discourse in the public sphere, where it remains a valid and sometimes potent tool of political mobilisation. In western societies, the ideological chasm between those who espouse a resurgence of nationalism and those who abhor it is significant. This is in marked contrast to several ‘non-Western’ nations where nationalism (in its contemporary mani-festations) either remains or has recently become a commonly-deployed means of forging political identity and a staple of media discourse. This paper examines news stories from 2014 in Australia that illuminate the complexities surrounding Australian national identity and nationalism. It surveys different notions about and approaches to nationalism as seen through media commentary generated by


the incumbent Coalition government’s declaration of new anti-terror initiatives and the invocation of a ‘Team Australia’. It uses commentary pertaining to the perceived strengths and challenges of Australian multiculturalism to shed light on both convergent and divergent understandings of national identity and the place of nationalism in contemporary Australian politics and society. National-ism can be both a means of engendering electoral and political affiliation and a more diffuse sentiment that pervades broader community ties in ways that go beyond mediated mobilisation. Multiculturalism as a trope, construct and category of political analysis serves as a useful context within which competing claims of national identity and nationalism may be examined. It has been a clear policy programme with its own federal office from the mid-1970s to 1996; as such it is a well-embedded notion in Australia. However, continuing conflicts and international events constantly re-inflect understandings of multicultural-ism. This paper explores tensions in Australian nationalism against the backdrop of Australian multiculturalism.

Arjun Rajkhowa is a PhD candidate and tutor in Journalism and Strategic Com-munication at La Trobe University, Melbourne. His research interests include: Asian studies, media and democracy in Asia, online and alternative media, public culture, media policy, popular culture, diaspora studies, human rights and political cam-paigns, and gender and sexuality.

Robie, David and Del Abcede: Cybercrime, criminal libel and the media: From ‘e-martial law’ to the Magna Carta in the PhilippinesPresident Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines in September 1972. Issuing the declaration under Proclamation 1081 which suspended civil rights, gagged the news media and imposed military authority in the country, Marcos defended this draconian move in response to a series of bombings al-legedly caused by communists. The emergency rule at the height of the Cold War was also planned to quell rebellion and drive national development. Mar-cos defended the authoritarian law under the Philippine Constitution and ar-gued that it was needed to defend Filipino citizens from ‘dangerous threats’ posed by Muslim rebels and Christian vigilantes challenging national securi-ty. Four decades later, on 12 September 2012, President Benigno Aquino III signed Republic Act No. (RA) 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act, into law. The legislation was immediately widely condemned as a threat to freedom of


expression in the internet, the media and online privacy and has been likened by human rights groups, media freedom advocates, ‘netizens’ and opposition congress members as comparable to the Marcos martial law era. Kabataan Rep-resentative Raymond Palatino branded the legislation ‘e-Martial Law’, compar-ing it to repressive Marcos-era decrees censoring and harassing the media. Nine Supreme Court appeal petitions were lodged against the Cybercrime Law but the subsequent ruling found the law constitutional in February 2014. However, new challenges have been issued since then, advocating a repeal of the law and replacing it with the ‘Magna Carta’ of internet media freedom. This paper examines controversy over the law as a case study and relates it to other tough new legal mechanisms against online media in the Asia-Pacific region and the implications for political reporting.

Dr David Robie is a journalist, author and professor of journalism. He is director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology and a former head of jour-nalism at both the University of Papua New Guinea and regional University of the South Pacific in Fiji. As well as founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, he is the author Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, Blood on their Banner, Mekim Nius and Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific. Del Abcede is an advocate for the Auckland-based Asia-Pacific Human Rights Coalition (APHRC) and the Philippine Migrant Centre, including editing Ang Filipina and Toktok newsletters. She is also the designer for Pacific Journalism Review.

Rupar, Verica: Journalism education and the concept of inclusive societyThe basic principle of journalism education as theory, research, and training is to provide the foundation for the effective and responsible practice of journalism. Journalism schools around the world aim to equip students with knowledge and understanding of news media’s role in society as well as skills necessary to pro-duce stories in variety of media formats. While journalism education compro-mises ‘a fundamental concern with “news”, and a corresponding concern with the acquisition of complex methods of knowing, representation and analysis’ (Adam, 2001, p. 317), training of practicing journalists focuses on the process of identification, selection and production of news stories in increasingly com-plex media environment. Journalism training and education prepare students to critically engage with political, social, economic and cultural development of


society and ensure well informed citizenry necessary for the functioning of de-mocracy, being it Europe or Pacific region. This paper discusses these universal objectives in the light of the concept of inclusive society. Using the example of the mobility project Inclusive Journalism Initiative: Reporting Europe and the Asia-Pacific run by consortium of four universities—AUT, Canterbury Univer-sity, Danish School of Journalism and Swedish school of journalism, Helsinki University—it aims to address the question of acute need for preparing students for greater inclusivity in news journalism.

Associate Professor Verica Rupar is journalism curriculum leader at the School of Communication Studies, AUT, Auckland. She has written on the epistemology of journalism, journalism in transition countries, the development of journalism form and style in historical contexts, excellence in journalism, ad media and diversity. She also serves as an academic consultant for the London-based Media Diversity Insti-tute and has been involved in the inclusive journalism projects in Europe, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Indonesia and New Zealand.

Singh, Shailendra: Media laws and political journalism in FijiSoon after seizing power in December 2006, Fiji’s military government em-barked on the most intense and sustained media crackdown in the country’s history. Initially its agents intimidated and roughed up journalists, but later re-sorted to more sophisticated strategies, such as decrees and emergency laws. The 2009 Public Emergency Decree gave government sweeping powers to censor the news, revoke the licences of offending media outlets and put State censors in all Fiji newsrooms to enforce compliance. The core, all-encompassing, media legis-lation, the Media Industry Development Decree 2010, stipulates stiff fines and jail terms for any breaches of the media code. Other laws to contend with include the 2009 Crimes Decree, which covers political violence and inciting communal antagonism through any form of communication, with a maximum 10-year jail sentence attached. These laws were implemented in the name of communal harmony, political stability and national progress—stated aims of the ‘Bainima-rama Revolution’—as well as media development and lifting journalistic stand-ards. Through document review and in-depth interviews, this paper looks at the genealogy and nature of media legislation in Fiji to understand how the legis-lation arrived at its current point and the impact on journalism. The research shows that alleged incitement of communal tensions by the media is a concern


from the colonial days, which peaked during the 2000 coup. Moreover even though freedom of speech was constitutionally-enshrined in Fiji, media free-dom has been fragile. This is partly because the British-inherited Fourth Estate traditions were somewhat at odds with Fiji ‘hybrid’ democracy—a combination of western and indigenous systems of governance. The Fourth Estate role also contradicts indigenous values such as deference to chiefs and persons in posi-tions of authority. This analysis also tries to determine whether the stated aims of the various legislations—communal harmony, national progress and media development—have been realised.

Senior lecturer in journalism at the University of the South Pacific, Shailendra Singh has published widely on Pacific Island media and development issues, both as a journalist and as an academic. Apart from a number of journal articles, Shailen-dra has edited a book and co-edited three journals covering media and development issues in the Pacific. These include the USP-based Journal of Pacific Studies (2012) on, ‘Conflict Prevention and Peace Building in Pacific Island Societies’ and he is a contributing editor of Pacific Journalism Review. Singh has extensive experience as a newspaper/magazine/online journalist. His is finalising his PhD research on conflict reporting in Fiji from the University of Queensland.

DAY 2 EVENING KEYNOTE: Stahl, Max: Film presentation at the Pacific Journalism Review 20th Anniversary Celebration: ‘If you want independence, you’ll eat stones’—a Timor-Leste

theatre of intimidation retrospective and anti-newsThe first part of an ‘experimental’ film—kind of anti-news—will be screened. The style is an attempt to do something the news almost by definition cannot—the story, or the many possible stories according to those actually involved inside the story, of a week in Timor-Leste in 1999 prior to independence from Indone-sia. It is challenging. There are no resumes available. It is outside the privileged world of news. Max Stahl will then show a quick summary of news stories that emerged from those 10 days of “free fall” in Timor-Leste when anything was possible. Stories which through the archive the CAMSTL crew follow over sub-sequent years. The presentation will include a glimpse of the Audiovisual


Archive on INAMEDIA (France) to provide an overview of CAMS-TL work. Max Stahl is an independent film maker and photojournalist who has covered conflict from Africa to Asia and has devoted recent years to an in-novative approach to documentary making honed by his life for more than the past decade in independent Timor-Leste. He is director of the Centro Audio-Visual Max Stahl Timor-Leste (CAMS-TL in the Timorese capital of Dili. His work was recognised by UNESCO in 2012 as a world heritage. His footage of the massacre of Santa Cruz in 1991brought the plight of the East Timorese people to the attention of the world and ultimately led to independence. In 1992, his work was awarded the Amnesty International UK Media Award for Yorkshire Television’s First Tuesday episode Cold Blood—the Massacre of East Timor. Seven years later he returned to Timor-Leste and traced its path to independence. For his coverage, he won the 2000 Rory Peck Award for Hard News. Other films have included Justice Denied (Gold Media winner at the New York Film Festival in 2003), Bloodshot: The Dreams and Nightmares of East Timor (2012, with Yorkshire TV producer Peter Gordon) and Alias Ruby Blade.

Guest speaker Max Stahl is sponsored for the New Zealand trip to the conference by AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies.

Thompson, Peter: Policy principle shifts underpinning the NZ government subsidy of film and documentary productionA focus on the shifts in the policy principles underpinning government subsidy of film and documentary production. Taking recent developments in the priorities of the NZ Film Commission and NZ On Air as examples, there has been a gradual policy shift away from recognising cultural and civic outcomes in their own right, towards more instrumental, economic objectives (such as growing industry and exports). Although both might be justified, they are premised on different values which affect the kinds of production that are politically and economically viable, benefiting some kinds of content producers more than others.


Dr Peter Thompson is a senior lecturer on the Media Studies programme at Vic-toria University of Wellington. He has published extensively on broadcasting and media policy in New Zealand, especially in respect to funding systems for public service media. Peter’s other main research interest concerns media and communica-tion processes in financial markets. He is a founding editor of the Political Economy of Communication journal, and is currently vice-chair of the IAMCR Political Economy Section. He is also chair of the Coalition for Better Broadcasting Trust.

Thomson, Chris & Bonita Mason: Why the where matters: A sense of place imperative for teaching better indigenous affairs reporting The traditional custodians of the Western Australian state capital of Perth, the Noongar people, have struggled to find a media voice. Much of Perth’s main-stream indigenous affairs journalism reproduces colonial discourse and perpet-uates racist stereotypes of Aboriginal people. Meanwhile, observers in several countries have critiqued a shift from journalism about specific places toward journalism concerned with no place in particular. Spurred by globalisation, this shift has de-emphasised the ‘where?’ question in the ‘what, where, who, why, how and when?’ template of journalistic investigation. Reporting from a project in which journalism students collaborated with Noongar community organisations, this article argues that an understanding of indigenous Austral-ians’ profound connection to place can inform journalists about the underlying character of places about which they report. The article suggests that working with indigenous people can transform the way journalists conceptualise their careers, and help secure a sense of place for indigenous people in the media. It illustrates that collaborating with indigenous people can teach journalists to view their professional practices through a sense of place lens, re-emphasising the ‘where?’ question in its application to both geographic place and the realm of a journalist’s imagination.

Dr Bonita Mason is a journalism lecturer at Curtin University, who teaches first-yearjournalism, feature writing and specialist Indigenous reporting. She has published in books and magazines, and is an award-winning freelance journalist. She has also worked as a policy adviser and speechwriter for government and as a media and policy adviser and writer for Australian Aboriginal organisations.Chris Thomson is a lecturer at Curtin University where he teaches online, photo and Indigenous affairs journalism. In 2010, Chris founded Australia’s first


independent, metropolitan news website which he still operates. Before that, he was a foundation reporter with Fairfax’s WAtoday.com.au, a reporter for an independent Perth newspaper group, and a trade negotiator with the Australian Government. His journalism has appeared in several national magazines and newspapers.

Verbitsky, Jane: New Zealand, Fiji, the ‘return to democracy’ election 2014, and science diplomacyThis paper examines the bilateral relationship between New Zealand and Fiji since the advent of military government in Fiji, New Zealand’s foreign policy reactions to Fiji’s departure from a democratic political system, and how the “return to democracy” election set for September 2014 may alter the dynamics of the current, uneasy state of the formal association between the two countries. The paper also considers the impacts of military rule upon the people of Fiji, including derogations from human rights standards and effects upon socio-economic development, during this period. It reviews options for the New Zealand government to begin to resume a “normalised” relationship with the Fijian government post-election, focussing par-ticularly on the concept of science diplomacy, and the potential utility of this spe-cialist form of diplomacy to both governments and, particularly, the Fijian people.

MINI-DOCO:Wreksono, Sasya: The Life of Pacific Journalism ReviewSasya Wreksono, a third year communications studies student majoring in Televi-sion and Screen Production, directed and produced this 10-minute documentary about the research journal Pacific Journalism Review over three months. “Docu-mentary is such a visual medium, it was a challenge to visualise how to make a film about an academic journal”, she says. Wreksono says she was helped along by reading lots of academic journal articles that her mother, a PhD candidate, is cur-rently writing and with advice from her tutor on bringing the 20-year existence of PJR into life through storytelling.

Pacific Media Centre | Te Amokura

School of Communication Studies AUT University | Sir Paul Reeves Building

WG1028 Private Bag 92006 Auckland 1142 Aotearoa/New Zealand

Phone:+64 9 921 9388 Fax: +64 9 921 9987

[email protected] Facebook: www.facebook.com/PacificMediaCentre

YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/pacmedcentre Storify: storify.com/pacmedcentre

Twitter: #pacmedcentre

Documents

Twentieth Anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review - PJM No 4 (proceedings)